Felt Fortune Cookie Advent Calendar

Hooray!  My Felt Fortune Cookie Advent Calendar was featured on the Martha Stewart Living Blog!  You can find the post here or you can find the calendar pattern here.  Fun!

Baby Jesus' Manger

The kids are trying to fill baby Jesus' manger with hay before Christmas.  Each time they do something nice, they put one piece of hay into the manger. 

That's our manger (inside the suitcase).  We just decided to put the manger, along with all of the extra hay, into this little suitcase to cut down on a big mess. 

Winter Terrarium

 

I've turned four glass food canisters into winter terrariums. The tallest jar has a toy deer and a little fuzzy weed that looks like a tiny tree. The second jar has another tiny tree and a vintage-inspired Santa ornament. The third jar has some paper Christmas trees. For the fourth jar I made a tiny wool felted snowman with a felt hat. 

 

To make the brim of the hat I cut a small circle of black felt. The top of the hat is made of a strip of black felt. I rolled up the strip of felt starting on the short side, and hot glued it in place when it was all rolled up. Then, I simply glued the rolled up felt onto the middle of the circle. 

 

 

Oh, by the way, for all of the snow I used leftover fake spider webs from Halloween. 

 

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

 

I've been slowly taking Christmas decorations out and putting them around the house.

 

I saw these two reindeer at a thrift store.  When I first walked past them I couldn't believe how ugly they were, but as I walk around the store I couldn't stop thinking about them.  After taking a lap around the store looking at other things, I decided I wanted to buy these little ugly reindeer.  I found myself in a panic, rushing back to them and hoping they were still there.  They were, of course.  I think they look great with these funny, little elves riding on them.  They are resting on a small wooden chair that I have on one my walls.

 

These little elves move from place to place around the house, watching for good behavior.  One is named Dirk.  Dirk is the elf that brought me small toys and candy during the month of December when I was a kid.  The other is named Durf.  He's the new guy.  The kids have high hope that these elves will reward their good behavior come December. 

Crayons and Creativity

This is, thus far, my all time favorite drawing by Ev(6).  It is a drawing of Micah(3) with his bunny towel on after he gets out of the tub.  I love it!

Chandelier Silhouette

 

This is something new for our house that I recently put together.  I used two old picture frames and painted them with Apple Barrel Bahama Blue gloss paint.  I painted the silhouette of a chandelier, but could have made the project easier by just printing one out on the computer.