Happy Monday friends!!
This week is all about Christmas preparation- from advent calendar and devotionals to cozy holiday wear to holiday gift guides. I wanted to start off the week by sharing our advent calendar for this year that I made, and I am not a crafty person! So, I’m not sure how I got the urge to do that, but I did, and it was super easy to make! You can definitely do it if I could!
I’m sharing step-by-step how I started and finished our advent calendar, what we’re reading as we countdown to Christmas, and I just have to share the details on this cozy Sherpa pullover I’ve been loving, because SO many of you are asking about it!
Materials:
To create this advent calendar you will need: a wooden rectangular board, mine was approximately a 1×2 board. You’ll also need white chalky paint (the best!), sand paper (to sand down after paint dries if you want to make it look more rustic), skinny nails, a hammer, stencils, paint pens, and depending on what you want to move every day to each nail will determine your other materials. I found some awesome 3 ft. long bendable wire that is covered in fake pine needles to create a simple wreath that we are moving each day. I also bought some striped twine ribbon and finished the wreath with that for a little something to add to it!
Steps:
- Paint board with white chalky paint and set aside to dry.
- While that is drying, make your wreath or other item you’re choosing to move from day to day.
- After paint dries, you’ll want to measure out how far apart your rows of nails will need to be, so that they’re even. I wanted to create my advent calendar into the shape of a Christmas tree, so I used an image on Pinterest I found and measured according to that. It doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect, just close enough that it looks symmetrical and even between rows and nails in each row!
- After you’ve measured, stencil on your advent numbers below your row lines with first pencil, then your choice of colored paint pens. I like using paint pens, because they’re easy to control. I also used a bigger stencil for the 1 and 25, so if you want to do that you’ll need two sets of stencils.
- After you stencil, let those dry. Go bake Christmas cookies or watch a Christmas movie. Or do some cleaning if you’re boring like that 😉
- Once your stencils have dried, it’s hammer time! 🙂 Hammer a skinny nail centered above each number.
- Add your wreath onto your board and you are all set! Advent calendar complete! Now to what you can pair to read as you prepare your heart for Christmas…
I shared on a few posts back that we (my husband and I) are reading through Paul David Tripp’s “Come Let Us Adore Him”. We’re also reading “Hidden Christmas” by Timothy Keller this month too. I have really been enjoying both, especially the devotional. There is a little section at the end of each day where it has a question to talk through with your children that relates to the central theme of the devotional for the day. I feel a little silly, but I do ask Collins the question. Building eye contact with her, conversing with her (in her babble of course), and simply interacting with her in this form are all key developmental skills I am trying to instill in her, and the teacher in me can’t help but involve her! She looks at me a little puzzled when I asked her yesterday morning what it means to be unwilling and how we can be more willing like Jesus is… but as we learned in our shepherding children seminar last year at our old church, this is the time to practice having these types of conversations with your children. It’s never too early to start using words like the gospel, Jesus, the Bible, sharing verses, and alike with your little ones, because when the day comes when they do ask who Jesus is, or what the gospel is, or how they can be saved… you’ll be ready and have worked out the kinks. With C we also read our It’s All About Jesus Storybook Bible and have been reading that with her for over a year now, and we love it. It has some great stories related to Jesus’ birth in there, so we’ve been focusing on that portion of the book for the last week.
These are a few ways we have been continuing to include C and prepare our hearts for the celebration of Christmas. I hope that these give you some new ideas about what you might do this year if you have none yet, or something you might try for next year!
OK- finally I want to share the link for this Grey Sherpa Pullover. It is the WARMEST pullover…like really really warm. It was 40 degrees when we were out running errands this past Saturday, and I didn’t feel the need for a jacket when we were outside, and I was legitimately SWEATING with it on inside the busy mall. I wanted to take it off badly, but I told my mother-in-law I couldn’t because I was wearing a white t-shirt with a dark gray bra on under it (head to forehead)… she laughed and said it was fine, because no one knows me here, but I proceeded to tell her that my white tshirt also said, “Super Mom Squad” haha! 😂 So… needless to say, I did NOT end up taking it off! But for real, if you’re looking for a cozy sweater to gift someone this Christmas, this is the one! It’s so soft and warm and reasonably priced. Comes in a couple different colors, but I opted for the grey, because that’s my color pallet of choice and like the versatility of the color!
That’s my little round up of questions I’ve been asked last week. Tomorrow I will start sharing my first of several holiday gift guides! First up, gifts for HIM! ♥️ Have a great Monday everyone!
-C
withlovefromcourtney.com 