December 1st

So, as I may have already said (or maybe not.  I can't remember), instead of a typical Advent calendar, we do a different activity every day in December leading up to Christmas.  I stole this wonderful idea from my sister.  Some days we do fun crafts, some days are about remembering the birth of Jesus as the reason for Christmas, some are to do something nice for someone else, but mainly it's just about spending time together.  I really like the idea of doing "Deck the Halls" for the first day, but our halls are pretty much already decked.    

The Christmas rag garland that I made last year.  Still loving it!

So, we did 2 "crafts" today.  First we made a terrarium, complete with teeny little carolers and a house that is much too big for our container.

Putting in the pebbles.

Next comes the charcoal.

Then the soil.

Then we added moss, a fern and our HUGE house, which seemed quite small in the store.  Oh well, the house will only be there for Christmas...hopefully the moss can survive the holiday season!

Our little carolers.

 Then we did the next craft.  Some of my friends and I went on the Woodstock tour of homes and saw lots of great Christmas decorations.  One of the ones I liked the best (that was in the Mayor's house) was silvery branches resting between 2 window frames with painted pine cones hung from them.  I wanted to recreate this and since we already glitterized pine cones for fall, we had that part of it done.  I originally decided to do the branches red with silver glitter to make it a little more festive.  Once we located a branch long enough and straight enough, I realized it was quite beautiful and silvery with no paint at all.  BUT I had already promised the 4 year old that there would be painting, so it became red.  I also wanted to do more than 1 branch, but was too impatient to wait for my husband's help, so just used the one that he had already found.  And of course, I had 6 colors of glitter in the package and she wanted to use them all!  So, it wasn't quite the sophisticated look that I was going for, but Lily loves it and I love it.

Getting started.

She's totally happy here.  She LOVES arts and crafts.

Adding mounds and mounds of glitter.

The final product.  What do you think?

Then she proceeded to paint anything that I would let her.  :)