countdown to christmas

I am already getting into the christmasy mood. I had the Young Women's newletter to work on for Dec. and it just begged me to turn on the Christmas music to get into the right spirit for writing a little spiritual thought for it.

Then I saw a facebook post from a scrapping friend for a fantastic project called "Journal Your Christmas" http://www.shimelle.com/classes/841/an-online-scrapbooking-class-for-the-holidays-journal-your-christmas/ so I got signed up for this class. And the online forum for it is already hopping, so I am starting to get my scrapping supplies ready. At first I just signed up to use the daily prompts to blog thru christmas - but the more I get into it, the more I am excited about creating it into an album as well. We'll see how far I can actually get. This will be our first christmas in our brand new home. That is scrap worthy all in itself.

But before I get started on my album, I needed to "warm up" my creativity a little bit. I still haven't gotten back into the swing of things, eventhough I was so excited when I got my scrappy desk, I just didn't have the energy to get to it. So I have made a countdown calendar.

I found the idea online. It uses a mini muffin tin as the base, and I just made simple squares to cover each hole. I used old fridge manets on the back (you know the kinds with ads for businesses on them).

I remember the advent calendars we used to get when we lived in Europe that had chocolates behind each day - this is the same. You can put whatever you want (that will fit) behind each day. I was thinking of an ornament behind each day, that the boys cpuld put on the tree. But that would involve finding 24 ornaments, so I probably won't do that this year. It could also have a scripture about the christmas story and the savior to look up and read. I have a list of scriptures if anyone is interested, I could post it, or e-mail it.

so here is what it looks like so far -- I still need to put the numbers on it. I haven't decided how I want to do that yet. And I also can't decide if I want it to count DOWN from 24 to 1, so Thomas will know how many days are LEFT until christmas -- or if it will just be the dates of the month 1 to 24 (Christmas Eve.) - I might do it the latter way, and then on the inside do more number for how many days that leaves left....