Advent Calendar & Spreading the Cheer!

Firstly thanks to everyone for reading and I am glad that I am helping people already. 

So let me ask you this question?  When do you start decorating and putting up your Christmas Tree?  We generally put ours up on or around 01 December but as David will be at school this year we are going to do it the weekend prior.  Then we will start decorating the house from there.  I challenge each of you to make at least 1 decoration this year for your Christmas tree and/or house or more and email me a photo that I will upload here to inspire others.  I know you can all do it.  I will be blogging decoration ideas in the coming weeks.

From tomorrow I will have photos daily of Projects that I am about to start working on or have finished along with recipes and goodies of what we are doing this year.

I am starting to compile lists of things that I want to do, presents list, card list etc.

What do you all do for an Advent Calendar?  Do you have one or are you going to do one for the first year this year?  These can be very simple or very elaborate.  This year we are using a string of mini stockings and in each day will be a note with an activity or an action that David will be doing that day.  Below are our activities for the year.  I became inspired to do this by Ali Edwards.  Here is a link to her blog post regarding this. 

http://aliedwards.com/2010/11/weekend-creative-advent-action-cards.html

These are not in any particular order and not the final list yet.  I am going to sit down with my calendar and a list of the days and work out what to do each day.  For the card making I am making up kits which I can just pull out for him.  I will share these with you once I have made them up.  I am on the odd day going to add a small chocolate or a small decoration for the tree.

Visit Santa

Make thank you cards

Visit Christmas Lights

Take a bag of cans and other non-perishables to the local food bank

Make Christmas cookies for your class mates

Take cookies to your class mates

Ring 3 people and tell them just how much you care about them

Take cards and cookies to Rest Home up the road

Take presents to Kids First/Star Ship

Decorate your Christmas Tree in your room and decorate room

Visit Candy land

Make some presses for others

Go shopping with Mummy or Daddy

Take presents into classmates and teachers and spread Handmade & Heartfelt Goodness

Do Christmas Arts & Crafts

Last Day of School for the year go out for hot chocolate and cookies

Prize Giving Dinner tonight

Make Christmas Cards and send them in the mail

Make a donation to the South Auckland Hospice Christmas Tree

This year we have a 6ft Tree and Christmas Decorations that we want to donate to a family that otherwise would not have a tree this year.  I want nominations from all of you.  We will send this tree and decorations any where in New Zealand.  If you could have your nominations into me on my email address by 01 December and once decided we will have the tree and decorations delivered to the family from you!

Also who out there would be interested in a “Handmade & Heartfelt” Christmas Gift Swap?  This does not need to be very big at all.  I would need names and addresses by 01 December then I will email everyone their lucky recipient who will be drawn out of a hat and then if we could have these sent off by 10 December so that we can make sure that these are sent off in time.  I am not limiting the number of people involved and there is no dollar value limit.   All I ask is that what ever is sent is “Handmade & Heartfelt”.  So if part of it is store brought that that little bit of “Handmade & Heartfelt” is somehow included in it.

May you all have a wonderful day and till tomorrow live everyday in a “Handmade & Heartfelt” way!