Christmas Traditions #1 ~ Advent Activities

I remember growing up my Sissy and I would always fight over one of the two advent calendars we had. One was a tree made of felt that hung on our bedroom door and each night we would secure a felt ornament to the tree (using Velcro). My Mom had made this one and sadly, this wasn’t our favorite (sorry Mom!).

The other was a panel with a picture of the inside of a home decorated for Christmas, similar to a doll house set up. Each room had a button sewn on and there was a little stuffed bear on a string that you would move from one room to the next. The bottom of the panel had a story/instructions that told you which room you moved the teddy bear to each night. On Christmas Eve, he ended up in the living room with the Christmas Tree!

While in Lancaster last year, when we told some of my Aunts and cousin Katie that I was pregnant, we found this beautiful Advent activity box. I fell in love with it right away and knew that it was what I wanted for our family! My Mom bought it for Peanut and gave it to him for Christmas (even though I was only 3 months pregnant at the time ;).

There are 24 compartments perfect for a little treat or piece of paper with the day’s activity inside.

Pinterest in certainly the way to go if you are looking for some unique traditions, decorations and food! I have linked some of our activities to specific pins but here is my December Pinterest Board if you want to check it out! I’m still moving specific holiday pins to designated folders since I originally had just a Holiday Board (silly me thinking all holiday related pins would fit into one board 😉 so you may want to also check out my Holiday Board here.

Here are the activities I have come up with! They will slowly change throughout the years as our family grows but for now, Rob and I will really enjoy these and Parker too, in a year or two maybe 🙂

1 Take our Christmas card picture
2 Make ornaments (more on this in a later post!)
3 Write a letter to Santa (more on this in a later post!)
4 Treat
5 Go to the store and pick out some food to donate
6 Treat
7 Make peppermint popcorn and watch “The Polar Express”
8 Visit Santa
9 Make a gingerbread house (more on this in a later post!)
10 Treat
11 Choose one toy to donate
12 Treat
13 Volunteer (more on this in a later post!)
14 Build a fort and watch The Grinch Stole Christmas
15 Make snowman donuts
16 Make thank you cards to write after Christmas thanking friends and family for gifts
17 Picnic by the fireplace for dinner
18 Treat
19 Make ice castles using sugar cubes
20 Make reindeer food for Santa’s reindeer
21 Drive around and look at houses decorated with Christmas lights. Make note of addresses we really like and send them a thank you card for making us smile.
22 Visit DC to see the tree
23 Bake cookies for Santa
24 Bake sour cream coffee cake for Christmas Day (more on this in a later post!)

I also plan to strategically place the activities for the best days each year. For example, the longer activities will be on the weekend, the letter to Santa will be towards the beginning, making the Sour Cream Coffee Cake will be towards the end, etc…

To help facilitate this, I made a December calendar.