One Day Closer

Yesterday was a lazy Saturday, and it is looking like today is going to be a lazy Sunday... and those are often the best kind!  Andrew has drill this weekend so I have the house to myself today.  And other than a few loads of laundry, I have not done much of anything!  (:

The first thing I did after waking up this morning (AFTER having my first cup of coffee) was flip the page on our new advent calender.  I made this Christmas Countdown last week, and am very pleased with the result!

We started, obviously, with 25 days, and now we are working our way down to 1!  And then to CHRISTMAS!!!

Each day has a little snippet of the Christmas story on it.... The versions from the books of Luke and Matthew, and some of the prophesies from Isaiah.

I painted a wooden clipboard, and hot glued the big bow to the front to disguise the ugly clip. I had the Christmas-themed scrapbook paper left over from last year.  The bow was also a left over scrap.  I cut the numbers out with a Cricut.  The clipboard cost only a dollar.  The whole project was very easy and cheap, and hopefully we will get a few years out of it! 

For our coffee table, I set out both last year's and this year's December editions of REAL SIMPLE magazine.  And then I filled a glass vase (originally used for our wedding) with plastic, gold ornaments and pine cones.  I snagged the pine cones from our neighbor's yard and then sprayed some canned snow on them. 

For practicality and pizazz, I made some Christmas-themed coasters, which I also put on the coffee table.

I did not invest much into our tree this year, since I have just a hodge-podge of ornaments that do not really go together.  We put black and white photos on the tree to spice it up some... some of Andrew and me, some of my family, some of his, etc.  I would love to perfect this idea, and start putting pictures of Christmases past on it each year.

This is the message of Christmas:  We are never alone.  ~Taylor Caldwell