DIY Christmas Advent Calendar

Do you remember those cardboard advent calendars with a silly picture of kids getting gifts from Santa, and each day you could open the little perforated cardboard door and get a waxy tasting piece of chocolate? I love those and miss them! This year I decided to make a grown up version of the Advent calendar out of many things I already had around the house. 'God Jul' (goo yule) means Merry Christmas in Norwegian.




I fill the bags with ornaments that we already had (special ones that mean something to us), and chocolates.

See the 'How to' after the jump. And here is a super cute round-up of Advent Calendars.

Nice buttons!

As you probably already know I love to recycle and reuse different items and make them into re-visioned works of art. So I made some little ornaments for the tree in the guest room from recycled cardstock and Juniper wood buttons I bought in Estonia. The cardstock came from a "fat quarters" of fabric that I bought and I've been saving them up for something useful.

I made a heart template and traced a heart onto each of the pieces of cardstock I had

I sewed a straight stitch around the perimeter of the heart with red thread

And hand-sewed the buttons to the cardstock heart. I sewed the buttons instead of gluing them on because after Christmas is over I want to reuse the buttons for something else. I can simply cut the thread and the buttons will come off easily

Then punched a hole with a hole-punch and thread a piece of yarn through the hole

Voila! Recycled loveliness

Christmas wish list revised

I try and make Christmas shopping as easy as possible, so I've made a list of things that I would like and give it to my husband. You may remember me posting my wish list as far back as August and now I'm making my final draft before I hand it over to Cam.

Here's what's on my Christmas wish list.

The Proud One - print from Amy Blackwell $16.00USD. Or this one for $9.00USD

get the book $45AUD from Hardie Grant Books, or through Amazon.com for $40USD

Owl in the Attic - print by My Folk Lover. $18.00USD

Spotty for dotties!

It doesn't matter how hard I try I still go nuts over polka dots. And there's nothing better than a balance of red and white with hints of light blue and light green for Christmas decor. I love natural colors as well, like brown, white, and oatmeal. These are the colors that I've chosen for this year...

this is a clipping from Bo Bedre Danish magazine from December 2007

I picked up some spools, once used for industrial thread, at a remnant shop.
I put some Christmas ribbon on it for easy wrapping.

The blue with white polka dot ribbon is from our wedding 3 years ago.
I have heaps of it and I'm still using it for gift wrap. Love it!

Recession buster Christmas

We're making sure we're extra good this Christmas because we don't want to miss out on any of the goods. This year will be a recession buster Christmas for sure with a smaller budget even though the Aussie dollar is really strong against almost all other currencies and the economists are telling us to buy, buy, BUY! Cam and I picked up an artificial Christmas tree (sad I know) for $10.50 on ebay.com.au. Shipping was nearly $30 but it was still cheaper than what I've found in stores so far. I'm making some homemade decorations and created these little Swedish Dala horses out of felt and string.

I'm thinking of putting some up in my etsy shop here and taking them to sell at craft markets - here's a packaging idea.