Ornament Advent Calendar

Take two big ornament coloring books, bought after Christmas last year at 90% off.

Color them. Also draw and color your own ornaments, such as "a rearing horse in front of a cactus," and "Santa getting married to Mrs. Santa," etc.

Cut roughly around the ornaments, then stick them to adhesive-backed cardstock.

Now cut them out nicely. Turns out that nobody wants to do this job, so you all have to take turns.

Punch a hole in the top for a hanger, and stamp a number on the back from 1-24:

 Repeat until everything is good and messy and finished--

--and you'll have made an ornament advent calendar! I planned out all the fun activities, one for each day, and wrote them on the back of each ornament, just below the number. Every morning in December, the little children will take turns finding the right ornament, reading the day's activity, and then putting it on the Christmas tree. Here's my master list:

• Decorate the Christmas tree.
• Make Christmas cards.
• Ornament party! (with our local homeschool group)
• Christmas Lowe's workshop (They're making Christmas trains, I do believe.)
• Nutcracker, performed by the IU School of Ballet
• Write a letter to Santa.
• Christmas shopping for Daddy.
• hot chocolate, popcorn, and Christmas movies
• Make Christmas presents for Gracie and Spots. (I'm going to take the girls to one of those pottery painting stores, and let them paint cat bowls. Wish me luck!)
• Christmas coloring and activity pages (We'll be in the car.)
• Make presents for friends and cousins.
• Make presents for grandparents.
• Storytime with Santa at the library
• Decorate a Christmas tree for the wild animals (peanut butter pinecones and all that).
• Go Christmas shopping for your sister (I don't yet know how I'm going to finagle that one...).
• Bake cherry bread with Daddy (It's a tradition on his side of the family).
• We're all going ice skating!
• Read Christmas books all day long (because Momma needs a break).
• Bake and decorate gingerbread houses.
• Drive around and look at Christmas lights (We'll be in my Arkansas hometown then, where the displays are spectacular).
• Bake cookies for Santa.

And then it's Christmas!

You'll notice that I don't actually have 24 activities going on--a couple of days we'll be in Cleveland for Bazaar Bizarre, and then another day we'll be driving home to Arkansas, blah blah, but I do plan on bringing the last couple of ornaments with us to hang on my family's tree in Arkansas.

If nothing else, I need the reminder, because last year I seriously almost forgot Santa's cookies.