Advent Calendar

Now I have seen MANY neat ideas for advent calendars. I pulled my idea from Family Fun Magazine a couple of Christmas's ago. They took kids socks and hung then on a ribbon and filled with goodies each day. I liked the idea, but never found the socks I liked. Then I saw on ravelry, Annie Purls idea for knitting a bunch of small socks for christmas - and BOOM the inspiration hit. Spring of 2008, I started knitting 22 small socks and a couple of bigger socks. I had them done last Christmas and I am reusing this Christmas. In 2008 K got a piece of choclate each day and a little animal. This year is a getting a fun size bag of M&M's and a small character from Wall-E, Cinderella, or Alddin. I have the character mixed, so she is getting a same set about every three days. I was able to find these sets at the Disney store when they were on sale. Unfortunately they had sold out of Sleeping Beauty already - which is K's favorite.

All the socks knitted up. The two larger one are for Dec 6th (St.Nick Day) and Dec 24th.

2008 hanging up

The first half of 2009

Last half of 2009

The garland is our christmas garland and I have have clothspins hanging up the stocking and they have numbers on so we know where we are at each day.

Stacks of Color

Doesn't look nice! Rows of colors ready to be played with. This is 7 different favors of Kool aid made into play dough, ready to be given as gifts to K's friends. I am still trying to figure out how to divide up what I have and who is getting it, but I know it will get used. What I like about this recipe is how soft the dough is and how it smells.

The recipe for this is super easy.

2 cups of water

2 cups of flour

1/3 cup salt

2 tbsp of vegetable oil

and 2 packages of kool aid

Boil the water, and add in the oil. Then add the dry ingredient and mix up. it helps to knead the dough a little to finish mixing in the flour and color. I was able to fill 7 large size baby food containers (the gerber brand). I loved that I have reused some containers, and made a great gift for our friends kids. I even have labels on hand to use!