Advent Calendar

This year, when putting out our advent calendar, I decided to go a different route. You see, I bought this cute advent calendar last year off etsy (b/c I finally realized that although I wanted to make my own, it just wasn't going to happen) but discovered that like many advent calendars, the boxes are tiny.  Last year, I filled it with tiny junky toys, coins and candy.  Of course, you can imagine that by day 10 last year Ava knew it usually was candy and therefore always wanted to open all of them.  Not to mention she did not need all those Hershey kisses/candy canes etc. and the toys, as I said, were just junk.

So this year's boxes were filled with activities printed on a tiny slip of paper. This has been so much fun as it gets the whole family involved and we do all sorts of fun things (the really good ones I'll highlight here on the blog).

First activity was to "Start a New Family Tradition." It gave me an excuse to finally buy the Elf of the Shelf (if you have a small child, I highly recommend this as it has been super fun).  There is a whole story about the Elf and each night he flies back to Santa only to return somewhere else in your house the next day and make sure you are being nice.  So basically it is a daily game of hide and seek with the Elf.  Oh and you get to name your elf...ours is named Arf courtesy of Ava.  Here is Arf in action (hanging out with our dancing Santa).

Another activity that Ava got really excited about was "Paint everyone's nails Christmas colors."  Look really close and you can see her nails alternate red and green. She thought this one was so cool!

Btw, I figured out how much Ava likes the advent calendar when on day 3 or so, right when she woke up, she went to find Arf and then asked if she could "pull out the calendar."  Of course, we usually wait for Darren to get home but she is always excited and ready for the activity first thing in the morning.