When I think of Christmases from my childhood, an actual Christmas morning rarely comes to mind. Instead, I remember most things like "camping" under the lights of the Christmas tree the night we set it up; playing with my mom's Christmas decorations - the nativity, her old musical church, the Christmas Village; ice-skating at the free rink for Family Home Evenings and on Corner Lake for Young Women's; being mortified as my mom dragged us caroling for FHE's to people we actually knew; and that blessed smell of a REAL Christmas tree. These are some of my most favorite childhood memories. My biggest Christmas memory, though, is of the advent calendar. My mom's looked similar to this: (only hers in my mind is much, much better - it's been given the polish of many years' fading memory :-D)
It's just 24 pockets sewn into 3 different colors of fabric. Each morning, my mom would fill the pocket with a small Christmas treat: a chocolate, a Christmas pencil, a candy cane, etc. I remember standing periodically at the calendar and using the different colors of fabric to calculate in fractions how much closer we were to Christmas.
This is an easy, easy advent to make. If I could do mine again, I would a) make it smaller - I wanted the pockets to be large enough in case I one day work up the courage to have a large family but the calendar turned out HUGE! and b) I would somehow make the numbers on the pockets stand out more - right now they're just traced onto the fabric with a fabric marker.
5 comments:
I've been thinking of getting an advent calendar, but now I know I will. Thanks for this good post. I think your mother was wonderful to provide you with so many sweet Christmas memories and impressions. I hope these are the type of things my kids remember.
I think your green fabric is the very same fabric mom used like 30 years ago!
Becky-
Looks so fun! You did a great job and your kids won't remember how perfect it looked but they will remember the wonderful memories and the super fun parents who take time to do things like this with their children. Traditions are so fun and truly are the memories I remember most. Thanks for the great idea. This year is a little crazy for me but I am setting a goal to start this next year.
That is a great idea. I haven't even got any of my Christmas stuff up yet. I'm such a Scrooge.
SO i have to admit i thought an advent calendar was a calendar with all of your "events" on it, but they were dumb enough to spell it wrong. Kayla wants an advent Calendar, maybe we will steal your idea... Simple yet easy!
Post a Comment