christmas goodies

The lack of Facebook {save that for another post}, has been making me a super pinning machine. If you would like to follow me on Pinterest, you can find my link on the sidebar {if you are seeing this in your email, you have to visit the actual blog}. 

And lately, there's been a lot of advent calendars. 

I remember when my family had one when we were young{er}. We would find the little numbers and put them on the pegs and fought over who did it which day. 

I wanted something like that for the boys. 

Only I had no idea how I would make one because I didn't want to buy it. After looking through Pinterest and pinning several of them, I did my own version with the materials I had.

Very simple. And to the point.  

Foam board, wrapping paper, scrapbook paper, cardstock, and a white crayola. Ta-da!

Andrew wrote the numbers on the circles--he did an amazing job, up until 20. Then he kinda gave up. We're not that far along on numbers yet--ha!

Oh and you're wondering what I stuck inside the little envelopes? Miniature ornaments. 

Ideally, the boys would have their own little Christmas tree in their room so they could decorate it themselves, but I think we'll do that next year. Right now, they love getting up in the mornings, seeing which deco they get, and putting it on the tree---and then taking it off and playing with it.

I love it. They love it. We're all happy. 

I personally enjoy a good candy cane {when I allowed myself to have one, anyway} and I remembered seeing this cute garland made out of candy canes at Dana Made It

And obviously I had to duplicate it. 

I'm glad these candy canes are out of reach. 

The boys have been going nuts with sugar ever since Halloween. 

No worries though, as soon as December ends, a no-sweets diet for the boys is definitely coming.

Our weekly crafts this week at school was snowmen and stockings.

I totally love how they decorated them! 

And we visited our local thrift store and holy crap do they have a lot of Christmas stuff! 

The husband has an "Ugly Sweater" competition at school so I grabbed a sweater along with the most horribly outdated decorations to stick on that poor sweater. 

Pssst! He won the competition! Click HERE to see the final result!

I can't wait to work on it and post pictures. I hope it comes out as good as I'm planning it. 

These guys were my most favorite find at the shop and I'm planning on them being the highlight of the ugly sweater:

 Aren't these elves the cutest, freakiest things ever?! I thought so too.

How old are they? They seem to be the "Elf on a Shelf" knock-off...and I'm so okay with that. :)

Since we started school, we have gone to the library every week. We have the most wonderful librarian, so kind and gentle and full of great ideas. I also saw this little pencil holder from Dana Made It and decided it was easy enough to do in 5 minutes before we headed out the door to see Miss Alicia. 

She enjoyed it so much, she was grateful for the pencils we gifted! 

There it is folks, my Christmas deco post! How have you decorated your home? 

P.S. The website DanaMadeIt.com is extremely crafty and it inspires me to write posts like this. If you don't care about crafts, then don't pay attention to this post. Just note that I keep this blog to document our lives. Crafting is part of my family and we enjoy it. 

P.S.S. IF you are a crafty person, then click on the tab "Crafti-ness" below my banner to see all the crafts I've made and documented on here. :)