We took out our advent calendar and hung it up yesterday. The children were ecstatic–their mother less so. I’d like to make a new advent calendar, something sparkly and with more candy involved.  Sounds like an easy sell to a bunch of kids, right? Oh no, my daughter started asking about advent activities before Halloween. I do love many of the things we do during advent, but around the 20th I run out of energy. If my kids weren’t such sticklers for tradition, these are some of the advent calendars I might make:

Books! 24 christmas books! Looks awesome, but sounds expensive, right? All the books don’t have to be new: use what you have, hit the thrift store, wrap a library book (why not?!). I think this is a great, simple, no-stress advent calendar. The kids get the excitement of opening a present each day and you all get to cozy up together on the couch every evening.

Many Christmas songs and traditions come from Germany, so why not an advent calendar too? All 24 of these sweet boxes are printed with a christmas scene or saying (in german). And they are available as a free download!

I love the idea of lighting a candle every night for advent. And I love even more the thought of having 25 candles burning for christmas dinner!  Here is another advent calendar that uses tea lights and a tutorial for numbered luminaries.

Martha Stewart always makes office supplies look awesome. This would be a great advent calendar for flat gifts: stickers, temporary tattoos, coloring pages, more stickers, cards, other flat things.

Yes, this is an activity advent calendar, but it’s free and printable and totally awesome! Plus Mr. Printable is a great site for (flat!) things to put in all these advent calendars too! Go check him out.

Delia from delia creates made this super huge! super fantastic! countdown to christmas advent calendar. Pop on over to her post to see this and so many more amazing christmas things she made.

Have you unearthed your advent calendar yet? Or are you making one? Or are you going the chocolate calendar route?

I wasn’t going to make my kids anything for christmas (what a horrible mother!) but then dammit, all my friends were making these beautiful robes for their kids. Basically I am 33 and was peer pressured into this sewing project.

Of course I’m glad I did sew them, because my kids look pretty adorable in their cozy flannel robes. The robe pattern came from Sewing For Boys, which I reviewed here.  The pattern comes together very quickly. Leave off the pockets and you could have one finished in a few hours. Make your own fiddly pocket pattern with contrast piping and it will take you a lot longer.

There is one mistake in the book. You must connect the two front pattern pieces before you cut your fabric, but that important step is missing from the directions .  I only realized this after I cut out all my pieces from the PLAID FABRIC! Oh, what’s that, you can’t tell? That is because I’m the master-plaid-matcher!

The fit of the robe is straight up old man robe. So sizes don’t matter all that much. I made the size 6/7 both for my 6 year old daughter and almost 5 year old son.  The fit is great on both. For their 2 1/2 year old brother I made the 2/3 size, but I should have gone a size up. His robe did get a little shorter because of the plaid matching I had to do, but a bigger robe would have fit him better and for longer too.

A few other things I would do to the pattern if I make it again:

• shorten the sleeves a bit.  They are meant to roll up, which is why they are so long, but they roll up a little too much for my taste.
• make the ties a least a foot longer. Makes it easier for little hands to tie (around those big bellies).
• lengthen the pattern a bit–especially for the smaller sizes.

A couple things I did right the first time:

• I made a hang-y up-y loop that I sewed inside each robe. It makes clean up time a tiny bit better.
• I skipped the belt loops and just sewed the tie to the back of the robe in one spot. That way the belt cannot be used as a leash or a jump rope or weapon.
• I read the fabric requirements. Each robe, each one, takes about 4 yards of fabric!

The cookie baking blizzard came and went this year already (and weirdly, left no snow). All the butter! All the cream! All the chocolate! All the nuts and dried fruit! Okay, so the last one isn’t so exciting, but there was a lot of fruit and nuts in this house for a while. Panforte, anyone?

I don’t think I made any new recipes this year, which is odd.  No wait, I made one new recipe, but I can’t tell you because there are some of you out there getting it! Oh and the linzer cookies were new to me, but not terribly exciting. I’m getting ahead of myself. Here are the deets:

caramels: three kinds, all by martha, gingerbread, chocolate, and plain with sea salt on top

sugar plums: Honestly, I make these mostly because of the name. How could you pass up sugar plums at Christmas? These are spice filled, honey sweetened, date and almond laden-ed bits of christmas past. And they are vegan to boot.

hazelnut thumbprints: My daughter and I like these the best. This year I put a bit of ganache in the middle instead of the usual jam. Surprisingly, the jam is better, but no one has complained about the chocolate.

english toffee: I make this every christmas, but this year I got all fancy and cut it in squares instead of breaking it in pieces. You have to cut it when it’s not too hot and not too cool. And hey, it worked! Also, I ate all the ones that broke.

alfajores: These were a new addition to the cookie roster last year and I’ve been thinking about them since! Creamy, caramelicious dulce de leche sandwiched between two light, flaky cookies with a crunch of sugar on top. Bomb! And hey, I wrote up a recipe for you on Dana’s blog for her Sweets and Treats Christmas Countdown.

Oh and those linzers up there at the top of the page: wow, linzer cookies are kind of a pain in the butt. They just look so damn christmasy I had to make them. I used Karen DeMasco’s recipe from The Craft of Baking (a killer book by the way). It was chock full of orange peel and nutmeg and hazelnuts. The texture was perfect, but I wasn’t keen on the taste. It was almost too grown up and boring. Maybe a boozy filling would have made it grown up in a good way.

Gingerbread men too: well you have to make gingerbread men (look more instagraminess).

Merry Christmas everyone! We’re off to Grannyma’s. I’ll see you back here on Monday!

Every year I make christmas cards for everyone and I usually enjoy it. Last year it was one more annoying thing to do and just went out and bought them. Then I bought some more on sale after Christmas to stash away in the box for this Christmas–knowing my future self wouldn’t have her shit together come December. But haha, past self, I gots it together this year! How did I do it? I had my kids make them for me.

My husband resized the christmas coloring pages I drew, my kids colored them (above are some of my favorites) and I sent them out. Done! Well, no I actually have a few more to get in the mail, but almost done!

Here is the xeroxed tree all decorated! The kids had a blast making ornaments for it.  They did have a hard time coming up with christmasy things, hence the orange octopus. And what is that giant purple thing, you ask? A whale shark, silly. Don’t you have one on your tree?

My sister said I should get lights for it and I do want to. These look like they would be perfect, but they are on back order. poo.

There was an overwhelming response to showing you the kids’ room now rather than later–you guys have no patience :) So I’ll have a few post for you next week (there are a lot of pictures for a such a small room). Here is a little sneak peek.

Have a good weekend!