You can find PART ONE of counting down to Christmas ideas HERE.
So after my 25 Days of Christmas for my husband, how did I top that for the next year? I didn't! Ha! We had a 1 1/2 year old and a 1 month old and I was too busy to coordinate something like that. But I knew I wanted to document some how. A lot of scrapbookers that I follow complete a December Daily scrapbook to document the month. I knew I couldn't commit to something like that on top of our weekly scrapbook. So here is what I came up with....
December Bucket List
In our newly finished basement, my husband painted the door to the storage room with chalkboard paint at my request. I figured the girls will enjoy it one day and in the meantime I enjoy it! I decided to create a bucket list for the month. I figured it would be more open ended. It would include some of the ideas we like to do every December and some new ideas we wanted to try out with the girls. There was no date attached to each idea - just an overall vision of what we wanted to accomplish for the month.
Overall, it worked pretty well. Some of the things on the list we normally do so it wasn't really anything extra. A few of the items were delayed until after Christmas because we just got too busy. Frankenmuth is a super fun city to go to at Christmas time but since it is quite a drive for us, we didn't go until January. For the most part we accomplished everything on the list. Low pressure, very little time and prep!
Modified Bucket List {Project Life Style}
I liked the success we had with the bucket list last December, but we tried again over the summer for a Summer Bucket List that was a fail. We got busy and the weather didn't cooperate for several of the activities we had in mind. Plus I think we just thought we'd be able to do a lot of the things we normally do without realizing how much harder it is with two little ones. And, because the chalkboard wall is in our basement, we only see it when we go downstairs. I wanted something this year that we could see. I also wanted something that could be easily scrapbooked into our weekly Project Life scrapbook.
I came up with 12 things we wanted to do this month. Again, some were things we do every year and some were new to us. I made 3x4 cards on my Silhouette. These will be able to slide right into our page protector next to a picture of us completing the activity. So we countdown to Christmas and I get part of the scrapbook done. Win, win!
I let my Silhouette do all of the work on these. I wanted to try out my new sketch pens so I created the cards with that in mind. I had to run each set of cards (6 to a page) through the machine 3 times - once for the gray lettering, once for the colored picture and once to cut the cards out. It took some time but really designing them, playing with fonts and coming up with the ideas took longer. Once they came out they were cute but kind of plain. I grabbed some watercolors (as in my daughter's cheapo watercolors) and randomly added some color to the cards. I like the result for the most part - some cards more than others. I think next time I might skip the watercolor, add a border or design around the cards and maybe use colored cardstock.
I quickly stuck these on the wall in our main hallway with washi tape in Christmas colors. That way we see them and remember to do them and can easily remove them once completed without destroying the wall or the cards. K doesn't even know what they say or what it is but she keeps pointing to the picture of the tree and saying she wants to work on our Christmas tree. So she sort of gets it. I set the timer tonight to take a picture of us reading our Advent book so I can pull that card off the wall and slide it in the scrapbook next to the picture. Easy!
Those are some of the ideas that my little family has done to countdown to Christmas. I'm sure it will continue to evolve as we come up with more ideas and the kids get older. For now, this works for us. At this point in my life, I need something easy and manageable and something that I don't need to remember to do every day.