Christmas Service Countdown Calendar

I am a sucker for Christmas countdowns and advent calendars. So when I saw this DARLING Christmas countdown calendar on controllingmychaos.blogspot.com, I knew it was my destiny to create one for myself. Each day has a laminated piece attached with a magnet that has a good deed behind it. Brilliant! Once again, she has an awesome tutorial so I'll let you check hers out. I ended up getting a board that was bigger than 12x12, that's why I have more of a patchwork look, but I am so so so excited to use it this year :)

Joseph Smith's Birthday Party

Every year on December 23, we celebrate Joseph Smith's birthday with a little mini-celebration in the evening. We make a little cake, sing happy birthday, and watch a church history video or read a related story afterwards. The kids love it and look forward to it as part of our holiday celebrations every year.

Christmas Stuff

Okay, this year has been kind of a bust for this blog, but I couldn't let Christmas get away from me without documenting some of my all-time favorite traditions:

• Making Gingerbread Houses from scratch (this year they are out of graham crackers...but hey :))
• Doing the 12 days of Christmas
• Decorating the day after Halloween
• On the weeks leading up to Christmas, we all keep a mental note of our most favorite decorated homes. Then, on the Family Night before Christmas, we drive around with little "trophies" (usually these are paper sacks of Christmas cookies with a trophy drawn on them) and we take our awards to different families...awarding things like "Most Colorful Lights" or "The Christmas Spirit Award" or "Best Use of Blow Up Figures" and on and on. This is one of my favorite traditions of all-time now.
• Going to Temple Square to see the lights
• We have a gift box with a bunch of stars. You do some secret act of service, put a star in the box with your name on it, and leave the box for the recipient to find (usually on the pillow). We try to fill up the box with stars by Christmas Eve.

Holiday Place Settings

I got this cute idea from Martha only I changed it a little. Since I have hundreds of sucker quaking aspen trees in my yard now, as well as some beautiful big blue spruces, I used those branches instead of pine branches and little blue spruce sprigs instead of pine sprigs. I also tied various ribbon around the branches rather than using berries, and I distressed both the white inner paper as well as the brown outer paper for a more rustic look.

I had run out of time so I wasn't going to do them this year, but I figured, why not :) To do 21 of them beginning to end, it took about an hour.