Advent Calendar and activities for a toddler

Christmas is so wonderful and such a special time of year. As a child our parents taught us about Jesus' birth and how He is really the Reason for the Season. While we knew and appreciated Jesus, we also knew and appreciated Santa Claus. I have so many wonderful memories of Christmas and want my Monkey to have wonderful memories that he will cherish forever as well.

Pre-Monkey days, when I was working for a group of decorators, I met a client that made such an impact on me. This woman was happily married to a loving husband that just happened to be really high up in the "food chain" at a monster oil company. With all the money they had access to and all of the experiences and opportunities they could provide for their children, I was so impressed that their children were grounded, appreciative of everybody and everything and they were such a strong Christian family.

Whenever I was around this mom I couldn't help but be a sponge and absorb all that I could. She just amazed me! One of the things she did was an activity based advent calendar. I questioned her about it and she told me the importance of the activities and how they all impacted the individual boy as well as others around them. With her boys in jr and high school this was the most important time to do the advent calendar because this was the age when they needed to be influenced by their family more than their friends and it would keep the family together during a busy time in their lives. So true.

Well it sold me!BBD and I did not grow up with an activity based Advent calendar but we knew we would do it with our children. What kind would we use? Well Carrie inspired me with this:

Her tutorial is great and she is way neater than I am. This is our calendar:

I used burlap as backing and metal flashing I found at Home Depot. My Goodwill frame was imperfect and there was also a hideous fabric border around the matting. No problem! Martha's glamorous glitter can fix that! To fix my frame's imperfections I dry brushed some metallic paint on.Remember, you can never have enough bling! For the boxes I used scrapbook paper and for the numbers I painted and embossed with glitter. I also added some stickers for extra texture on some of the boxes. What? Oh you want to know what I filled the boxes with? Oh you just wait...I documented the excitement with pictures. I want you to "feel" the excitement with me!! hehe.