2013 advent calendar (a very late post!)

Hello! Season's greetings! I know I'm super late with a Christmas themed post, and you're probably well and truly over Christmas, if you celebrate it, but please indulge me in posting this, I really wanted to show off our advent calendar.



For several years now I've been making advent calendars using little disposable paper envelopes, but always had it  in mind to sew little fabric pockets, never quite getting around to it. So this year I elevated it to no.1 on the craft project list, did some serious daydreaming, a little Pinterest searching and gathered supplies.



I essentially sewed little pockets to hang from our silver stick (used previously to hang Christmas ornaments) in our corridor. They'd then be filled with treats or suggestions for activities. And as anyone with small children knows, the whole ceremony is quite exciting :-)



The pocket outers are made from one of my favourite oatmeal coloured linens, then each has a contrast colour used for embroidering the numbers and lining the pockets - as seen in the pic above.



Embroidering the numbers took a few days to complete - every kids soccer lesson, swimming lesson and play in the park saw me sitting stitching away, but I loved every minute of it. I find embroidery so enjoyable, particularly freeform style. There were also lengths of ribbon to cut and buttons to sew on - I used a mismatched assortment from my button jar, which worked out fine. What wasn't quite so fun was the production line style sewing of all the linings to the outers, but in the end it wasn't so painful.



And what I'm thrilled about is that we now have something that can be used year after year, creating a little tradition for our family. And with any luck it will be loved and cherished for years to come. The only thing that didn't work out so well was that as I spent so much time making it that the contents were quickly put together and sweets based, little chocolates and lollies mainly, rather than fun activities and outings. But hopefully that will happen next year, when at least one thing will be off my Christmas Craft list!!