Friday, December 30, 2011

Christmas Countdowns and Countdowns

This year I made a countdown to Christmas...25 days of fun activities...the boys LOVED picking a number each day to find out what we would be doing.  We did pretty good...there were a couple of days that we missed just because things came up, but I would say we completed at least 90% of our activities!  Pretty fun!


I folded 25 of these envelopes with 25 different pieces of Christmas paper that I actually had....lol
Our completed countdown

Our 25 days of activities included:
1-  Make snowflakes and hang them in the window
2-  Get a Christmas tree and put it up
3-  Decorate the tree and house while listening to Christmas music and drinking egg nog
4-  Listen to the prophets speak about the true meaning of Christmas
5-  Learn about serving others and make treats for our friends (we elfed a few of our friends this night)
6-  Watch Mickey's Christmas Carol as a family
7-  Write a letter to Santa Claus and send it to the North Pole
8-  Go visit Santa and get a picture taken with him
9-  Read stories about Jesus and Christmas from the friend and color pictures of the first Christmas
10-Take Daddy to Candylane @ Hershey Park
11-Watch Small One as a family
12-Make and decorate a Gingerbread House
13-Read 12 days of Christmas then sing and act out the song
14-Drive through Sweet Lights and sing Christmas carols
15-Go see Arthur Christmas @ the movie theater *loved this*
16-Make special Christmas cards for our family
17-Go see the lights at the temple
18-Special family night singing Christmas songs (we were supposed to go caroling...but daddy got the flu)
19-Drink hot chocolate and read Christmas books together
20-Read the Christmas story from the Bible
21-Make cookies for Santa and treats for the reindeer
22-Learn about the true meaning and symbols of Christmas
23-Have a Polar Express movie night with our friends
24-open one present (that Mom & Dad choose) and read through our special Christmas book
25-It's Christmas Day!  Give a gift to Jesus, open presents and let's have a fancy dinner


Here is the 16th day of Christmas...we made 6 Christmas cards for our grandmas and grandpas.  It was pretty fun! (and messy)



Another thing that was a bit time consuming this month...
I was asked to figure out center pieces for our ward Christmas party.  I had a  $3/table budget and they wanted silver because they had navy table cloths.  This was a hard task...everything I thought of was at least $5/table...so I found this idea and put it into plan.  I folded 25 Christmas trees from magazines...then sprayed them silver, glittered them up and ended with a clear coat over the top to help keep the glitter on.  A LOT of work..but atleast I didn't procrastinate...I folded 2 or 3 a day (the took about 45 min a piece to fold when I first started...but by the end I could do one in about 25 - 30 minutes)  I think they are pretty awesome and they went over well at the party...I took 3 home and the rest were taken by members of the ward.  It was a great Christmas party!

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