Christmastime is Here...and a tutorial.

 It's still November, but in this housewife's home, Christmastime is here. Last year I spread myself too thin and had a very hard time enjoying the holidays and I knew I wanted this year to be different. So I closed up shop on my photography business for a while, said "yes" to what I can do "no" to what I really can't and I am ready for this fun time of year.

As a mom, I get to be the one to sprinkle the magic around this home, and I intend to. Kidd-O is at a really fun age and while I haven't really shown him all this Season has to offer yet, I think the kid really digs it! He always says "oh wow!" when he walks into our living room to see the tree lit and wants to eat lunch next to it everyday. And our Nativity scene came in the mail and it moved him so much he said "momma, wet's pray" and we have watched Frosty the Snowman no less than 3 times per day. I guess it's safe to say that he is MY kid since Mr. Clean is usually all bah-hum-buggy about such "silliness."

One of the things that I plan to do to make this Christmas season even more fun is to do an advent calendar. I have been all over the Pinterest world looking for ideas and after spending an unreasonable amount of time researching, I came to the conclusion that A) I can look allll I want but I still don't know how to sew and B) I don't have ANY money to spend on it and C) Christmas will be over by the time I make a decision.So I shut the computer off and got to thinking about what I COULD do. I had $10 and a Walmart, which is all I needed!

I had every intention of using a Bible verse for everyday, but all the ones I could find were super long, and I don't know how to use our printer. So I will have to make that a priority for next year. For THIS year, I used brown lunch bags ($1.50 for 50) and I went to their Christmas party section at Walmart and bought little packs of Christmas trinkets (stamps, little capsules to drop in water to make little shapes, wind up toys, etc.) and I bought a bag of hershey kisses and a pack of candy canes.

I then cut out circles. wrote the day on it, taped it to the bag and stuck a random trinket in and stapled the bag closed. For the days that had a piece of candy in it, I looked over our calendar for the month and picked the days that would be most conducive for a special activity. For instance, we will bake cookies, go for a "nature walk" (which is just the woods behind our neighborhood pool), watch a Christmas movie and have hot chocolate (our Netflix is loaded with Christmas movies for the next few weeks), go meet Santa, drive around and look at lights, etc.

I was planning to wrap a closet door with wrapping paper like I do to display our Christmas cards,

 but I almost lost my sanctification while wrapping the first door, so I decided to brainstorm other options. I did think about stringing them up with clothes pins on our mantle, but I decided to spruce up our foyer instead and hang them with yarn from the bannister and voila! The advent is ready!

And as a bonus tip that I learned from my mom years ago, go to Home Depot and dig through their scraps from their Christmas trees and load up your car with limbs!! I use them to stick in my pitiful Christmas Tree to lessen it's "bless it's heart" factor, or to spruce up my $4 Walmart garland, to make Christmas swags, or add them to wreaths. The possibilities are endless!!

 Happy Holiday Crafting, from my home to yours!!