We started our Book Advent Calendar on the first.
I saw the idea last year. Sorry – I can’t remember where and loved the idea!
After the Holidays last year I gathered up all of our Christmas books and put them away so I could keep track of them. I got them out this year and discovered that I only needed 8 more to reach 25!!
And guess what??
I found the ones I needed to reach my goal this year at The Dollar Store!!
And they were pretty cute too!
My girls were so excited to open the first book. I made sure it was Elf On A Shelf. We discovered that last year too. Do you have one? We named ours Zoom!
Look what Ella lost over Thanksgiving! And speaking of Ella, I am running around like a madwoman getting her birthday party together for tomorrow. I am throwing a Vintage Tea Party — she’s so excited!!
And I also wanted to tell you about something else exciting that’s happening tomorrow —
A really fun crafting twitter chat @ 4 PM EST/1 PM PST.
Our topic for this week is “Craft Blogging 101” and we are going to be sharing our top tips for beginning craft bloggers.
If you don’t have a twitter account you can still spy in on us. If you go to tweetchat.com and follow the #crafterminds you can follow along in real time (you just won’t be able to give your two cents).
The Craftermind Girls are:
Come join us as we kick off our weekly #crafterminds chat tomorrow!
We’d love to see you there!!!
Have a great night!!
xoxo
I love this idea so much, but my kids want to read all their Christmas books all the time. So, instead I've put all our books in a basket and feature one a day with go along activities on our advent calendar.
We don't have quite enough to unwrap, but the girls choose a new book to read every day. Next year I think I'm going to wrap them, we should have enough by then…
I love, love, love this idea!!! I must copy it for next year. (Our elves are named Cricket and Elfie.)
In reference to The Hopkins Home's 10 year old's kiddie book phobia, I completely understand. My suggestion is reading a chapter from "The Biography of Santa Claus." It's a great book and allows her to feel like a grown up while carrying forward this awesome tradition.
Love the advent book idea. Next year maybe (although, I don't know if we'll be too chapter booky by then). The vintage tea party sounds too die for!!!
i love this idea! I saw someone did something similar with halloween and I want to do this now next year. keep the great ideas coming jenn!
We do a count down with books too. I started last year and posted about it. I hope it continues even when my boys are teens! 😉
Awww, Ella is adorable! Love her toothless smile! Good luck with the party! Do share. 😉 No wonder your not on FB right now! Ha!
We have been doing this wrapped book idea for about 5 years now. My kids love it. I switch a few books out each year. I slowly weeded out the baby books for more age appropriate ones. My favorite new one this year is "Mortimer's Christmas Manger". My kids look forward to this every year. We also open a window on the advent house, and put a piece on our nativity quilt. I have 3 kids, so they all need a job every night. I love this season! Merry Christmas!
We've done this for a couple of years as well! It's a great way to keep track of the days leading up to Christmas. I don't know if it's helped anyone else, but with a lot of family out of the area, we get gifts mailed to us or dropped off & left under the tree and opening a book every day keeps my daughter from asking about opening the other gifts. We're always looking for new books to add to the collection and switch them around every now and then just to keep them the right age group for her.
Our elf is Elfin – but he's a Santa Fairy type elf….he hides in our house every night and the kids get to seek him out the next day 🙂 He also likes to leave them little notes about how cool he thinks they are and sometimes how not-cool their behavior has been ; ) I love this tradition and I love the advent basket too except my 10 year old thinks she's too old for little kid books anymore – breaks my heart I tell you! Can't figure out if I need to tweak my selections for her or if I continue with the old standbys for her 2 younger sibs. hmmmm….
Hi there, I love the idea of unwrapping a book a day too. I read about it last year on 320 Sycamore, maybe you saw it on that blog, because she is talking about it again this year too. http://granvillehouse.blogspot.com/2010/11/countdown-to-christmas-with-books.html
Happy holidays!
~Edith
this is such a fun idea!!! i need to make an advent calendar next year!!
I am so in for the twitter chat!!! See you there!!!
We JUST got one this year. His name is Teeny Elf France. LOL
We do the advent books. My daughter loves it!In the past I have done the candy & coins advent. This is the 1st yr doing the books. If anyone is looking for Xmas books @ a great deal, day after Xmas Target Christmas themed books went 50% off. During the spring Scholastic online Xmas books are about $1.00. used books stores, garage sales too.
Our Elf's name is Peachy, and just the other day, he brought a friend back with him for my nephews.
We read the story every night, and my kids love it!
Our elf's name is Zilt and man, what a great book! The kids love him and love looking for him each morning! I like to pull the "Zilt is watching!" card too when they start getting crazy 🙂
Maybe you saw the idea over at Sarah Jane Studio- I forget where I find stuff ALL THE TIME- thanks for sharing such a fun idea!!!
What a great idea! I don't have any littles and honestly don't plan on it any time soon (if at all!) but a girl can never be too prepared… filing this idea away in my Just In Case file 🙂 I normally don't go gaga for the advent countdowns, they're just not my thing, but I love this book one!
Such a fab idea Jen! I need to get some more Christmas books! xxoo
We have a basket of Christmas books that I leave out all month and we read the Elf on the Shelf on the 1st too. I am loving the idea of turning them into an advent of sorts by wrapping them. Tucking that idea away for next year. Thank you 🙂
What a great Advent idea. I will have to start a Christmas book collection so that we can do this next year. I don't think that we have any right now.
Hi, Jen. It's so funny that you just posed this question in your post. I just finished publishing a post on my blog about a Christmas tree my sons and I decorated for a tree fesitval this year using ornaments we had made last year to go with the Advent Christmas books we read. In case you would like to check it out, I'm including a link. Thanks for all your great inspiration.
http://adayofwonders.blogspot.com/2010/12/storybook-christmas-tree.html