Happy December

Last year I talked about the little family traditions we've started... the Prescott Parade, the Nutcracker (which is this Friday night!!). Well, I'm happy to say I've got a couple more up my sleeve.

While browsing the web for craft ideas I came across some really cool ideas for advent calendars. Forget cheap chocolate hiding behind doors... this year, and every year thereafter, we're counting down the days to Santa's arrival with books! The idea was to get 24 Christmas themed books and wrap them up. I've numbered each one and every night beginning today the kids will find the number for the day & unwrap the book. That way every night they will get a Christmas story before bed! Once Christmas arrives the books will go away until next year when I will wrap them again in random order. The initial investment has been a little pricy because I've had to buy most of the 24 books, but then they'll just get re-used year after year. The kids will be so excited every December to get to read all their Christmas books again, all the while counting down the days until Christmas!

Unfortunately my book shopping backfired and I haven't received all 24 of my books. I really wanted to have ALL 24 books wrapped by today but I had to order quite a few of my books online. So I'll wrap them as they arrive & add them to the box.

Then I used a little heart-shaped punch & sticker paper to create tiny little hearts to hide the numbers on...

So today the kids opened # 1. Enter new tradition number 2...

Oh yes. I'm sure you've all seen it before by now. And I caved. I pretended that I just bought a book about this elf but that Santa must have come last night and somehow brought it to life. Oh that sneaky Santa... never ceases to amaze! So we sat on the couch and read the book. The kids were in awe. They hung on every word and by the end were fully engulfed in the story of our elf on the shelf. They just couldn't believe it! She comes to life every night and visits the north pole to report to Santa on their behaviour (good & bad)! First they needed to give her a name so the magic would work, but they can't ever touch her or her magic will vanish. Sam freaked out when Juliet "pretended" to try and touch her. Lol. Sam immediately wanted to call her Dairy Queen. Really? I don't know where he gets his ideas, but Juliet didn't like that. We couldn't even sell her on DQ. Then I suggested a name and both kids thought it was great.

So her name was chosen and then we decided on a place for her to sit & watch us for the rest of the afternoon. Sam panicked.... I told him it was okay for adults to touch her. "How do you know?" he asked. "I looked it up online." I said. "Oh. Ok." Phew...

So... here she is perched on the TV where she spent the day observing.

They are SOOOOOOO excited to wake up tomorrow and find her hiding in the house somewhere, and equally excited to open book #2.