Advent activities days 3 - 5...

... as newly elected co-chair of the PTA I was involved in one of our biggest fundraisers of the year on Friday night - the school fair. It had been manic in the run up to it, we had a very busy and successful night and I was left exhausted all weekend.

Therefore I have majorily fallen behind with my Xmas journal. I've spent some time tonight sorting out photos for the next few pages, so hopefully tomorrow I can crack on. For now I'll leave you with photos from our daily activities.

(yes he does look a bit drunk, I promise he wasn't!)

JYC Day 2 ...

... the offical prompt yesterday was about the weather, but as I already intended to add in my frosty photo from the 1st , I decided to go with Shimelle's alternative suggestion of including a monthly planner.
Day 2's activity: a festive colour!

Right - off to read today's prompt!

December 1st ...

... here's the Advent Activity Calender in situ with the girl's chocolate ones. We went to the German Christmas Market in Birmingham on Sunday and was really pleased to find wooden Nutcrackers on sale. DD1 loves this story and has wanted one for ages - so he is taking pride of place on the mantlepiece. The girl's opening their calenders, yes I let them have the choccies in the morning, but not until after breakfast!!

So today's activity is to decorate Christmas cards - the glitter glue is ready and waiting.

Advent Activity Calender ...

... so inspired by Stacy Julian's advent project I set out to find something I could do quickly. I remember seeing a digitial download some time ago that could be printed straight out, but couldn't find it anywhere. So I came to the conclusion I was going to have to make my own!

Ta da! I pulled out an old QVC kit, made up some envelopes and stuck on some embellishments and numbers (mental note to check you have enough 1's and 2's before starting out). Really pleased with my result. The snowflakes are card pegs from Tesco's and I will hang the envelopes up across our fireplace come Dec 1st (shall post a picture when they're in situ). The next task is to type the daily activities up on little cards to put in the envelopes. These are what I've come up with (mainly gleened from the internet):

- Make a lantern and go for a neighbourhood walk
- Paint everyone's toenails
- Have an indoor picnic
- Dress up 'fancy' for dinner
- Make a tree decoration
- Make paper snowflakes
- Make cookies and wrap up some for the neighbours
- Make a popcorn garland
- Take a drive to see the neighbourhood lights
- Sing and dance to Xmas songs
- Have a cooked breakfast and listen to a Xmas CD
- Use puppets to tell a bedtime story
- Write letters to Santa
- Decorate Xmas cards
- Game night
- Read Xmas story books
- Make a gingerbread house
- Give everyone a silly hair-do
- Make angel decorations
- Take photos of each other
- Have a family awards night
- Make and wear fancy hats for dinner
- Make gift tags
- Open a present (Mummy and Daddy to decide) on Xmas Eve
- Visit Santa (school fair)
- Eat tea by candlelight
- Watch a Xmas movie with sweets and popcorn
- Make or write a book about Xmas

There's more than 24 ideas here, but I'm not going to decide until the night before which activity we're going to do so I can changes things around where needed.

I thought if I typed the activities onto cards, I could then add the cards into my Xmas Journal (when I know what I'm doing with that!!)