New Traditions

Pinterest has provided endless holiday ideas for me as I scour others' pins for hours.  As Stephen and I enter the holiday season as a married couple, our traditions/what we're used to will have to change some. We have never spent a holiday together in all of our 5 years of dating. Our families do things at the same time so we'll have to adjust our traditions this year. I'm not a huge fan of change, but I'm going into this year with excited anticipation of how fun it will be as a married couple.

As our traditions are changing, I decided it might be fun to start some new traditions of our own. Pinterest is just the place to get a plethora of ideas for that. One day there were several pins about advent calendars. I had heard of them before, but didn't know much about them. As I learned about the different types of advent calendars, I decided it would be fun to make one of my own for me and Stephen to do this Christmas season. I don't know if there is a certain way you're supposed to make them or use them, but I took my favorite part of each and made my own variation. I created my own calendar and Stephen and I came up with our own things to do each day.

I started with an old card board box

Decorated it...I used scrapbook paper that I had in my classroom

Brainstormed a list of ideas we would enjoy doing leading up to Christmas

Made our daily envelopes

I wrapped note cards (so they would be a little more sturdy) with wrapping paper. I used a wrapping paper that had a big enough design that I could have one design on each card.
Then, I numbered the envelopes

Glued down the cards...making sure to leave the top open so I could put the daily activity in later

Got a calendar and mapped out our month...I wrote down which days had activities that we would need to prepare for before the day of like having people over for dinner

Paper clipped activities inside each little envelope and hung!

We'll open one per day until Christmas day!

If you're interested, here is our list for this year in no particular order!

1. make a gingerbread house
2. drive around and look at christmas lights
3. make cookies
4. drink hot chocolate and watch a christmas movie
5. make ornaments
6. mail out christmas cards
7. camp out in front of the christmas tree
8. go to the christmas eve service
9. volunteer at the durham rescue mission
10. have friends over for dinner
11. try a new recipe
12. invite our parents over for dinner
13. have a game night with friends where everyone brings their favorite christmas treat
14. make our favorite christmas snack
15. go to the bahama christmas parade
16. get starbucks together
17. go to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant
18. go see the living christmas tree
19. wrap presents
20. shop for stocking stuffers
21. decorate and hang stockings
22. watch a christmas movie on tv
23. pack an operation christmas child shoe box
24. have a date night
25. enjoy christmas day with family and friends