Our Advent Calendar

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed a few photos from our advent calendar. We haven't done advent calendars in the past because I've been turned off by the idea of giving chocolate/candy or crappy little trinkets every day for a month. Then last month I saw a great idea from Jordan: advent calendar activities! I thought this sounded like great fun and also an awesome way to make sure we can check off everything from our Christmas bucket-list!!

Most days I've planned for activities, but there are some days where my son gets a new little toy: I think there are 5 Schleich toys, 1 small Christmas Lego set, and a small bag of miscellaneous Christmas stamps. The rest of the days are filled with awesome activities. We have done several so far (links with photos). Here's the run-down of what we're up to this month:

Visit with Santa (for photos)
Make our own marshmallows and have them with hot chocolate
Write, stamp, and mail Holiday cards
Go ice skating
Make cookies for Santa
Make pinecone garland 
and other art projects, suitable for giving to Grandparents
Wrap presents 
Make gingerbread house
Visit library to pick out Christmas books

I'm a big stamp collector, and by collector, I actually mean user- I love to USE vintage stamps! I had almost every denomination from 1-25! I ordered a few missing stamps and got to work! I pulled out a few other things I had around the house: envelopes, yarn, paint chip samples, and my typewriter. A neighbor gave us the giant bulletin board and my son picked out the frog tacks from the craft store. Here are some photos! Have you done a non-traditional advent calendar?

 

 

Getting our tree

The advent calendar on Saturday said it was time to get our tree! So we headed out to Patchen Farm in the Los Gatos Mountains. It was a lovely day and we all had fun going up and down the hillside in search of the right tree. 

After trimming the tree, we went to a birthday party! What a great weekend!

A Halloween in 3 Costumes

We spent this morning at my son's school. He was so excited to show his bi-plane to all his friends. During Show & Tell he told everyone how Uncle Alan made it and what colors we used to paint it. (Thanks to Jordan for the inspiration). After the school parade, he was a bit tired of wearing it so he did some face painting and later transformed in a clean lizard.

This evening, we'll trick-or-treat around our neighborhood in the bi-plane. And you'll be glad to know we're finally going to let him try candy!! We said he can pick out 1 piece and then trade in the rest for some new books. I like that idea and there are so many great alternative ideas if you don't want your kids to eat all of their candy (check out Design Mom's article on the topic). Happy Halloween, everyone!