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 :)

PVC Pipe Swords

Another winning idea actually came from my neighbors. They made these awesome swords for their family reunion, and we got to borrow them. They kept the boys in the family occupied for hours!

For each sword, you will need:

• pvc pipe (I think it's 3/4 inch...small enough to fit in the hole of a swim noodle)
• swim noodle (each swim noodle makes at least two swords)
• pvc pipe end cap to keep the tip of the pipe from being too sharp
• electrical tape (we had red, white, and black).
• glue to secure pipe to noodle
  

1. Cut the pvc pipe to the size you want...we had 3 sizes...adult, kid, and little kid ;)
2. Cut the swim noodles to be about 1 food smaller than the pipe you have to make sure you have a pvc pipe handle (at least two fist lengths) and place the noodle around the pipe. Glue the pipe to the noodle.
   
3. Wrap the noodle with LOTS of electrical tape. Make sure you secure it to the pipe...none of the noodle should be showing when you are finished. Take extra care to make sure the tip of the sword is covered in an extra layer or two.
4. Place the end cap on the handle of the sword. Glue if necessary.

Family Yahtzee

I got this idea from a blog I found on one of my friend's links, and I had to try it. She gives a great tutorial so I won't repeat that here.

A couple of changes I made was I didn't put paper over the whole box...I used it more as an accent. I also added the quote, "The family the plays together, stays together." along with a family picture on the side.

I had a bunch of birthdays coming up, and thought this might be a fun idea. I bought the box at Roberts with my 40% off coupon, which made it about $1.65. I had a bunch of the wooden blocks already, and I made the score sheets on the MS Excel and then took it to Alphagraphics to copy and bind. Each pad cost around $3 for the copies and the binding. I had all of the paper and the modge podge, the paint, and the golf pencils, so it ended up being a very inexpensive project. The pics are bad, but I think it turned out really cute!!!

Line of Authority

This one is a little late, but for Christmas, I made Bryan a sign that showed his Priesthood Line of Authority, and pictures of all the men in that line. It wasn't as hard as I had originally thought it would be to track down the pictures, and it is a pretty easy process to get your line from the Church if you don't already have it.

Why I Love You Books

I got this idea from http://www.sugardoodle.net/. It was a fun way to do valentines for my kids, and it also used up some of my scrapbooking paper (you know the stuff that just hangs around forever that you think is cute, but you can't really think of a page to use it for...yeah, I used that!)

I got a package of chipboard pages (6 or so pages come in a package).

Some of those metal rings (I ran out...thus the one ring on this one)

I went through and picked out my favorite pictures of the kids and wrote "I love..." statements to go with each one. At the end of the book, I wrote them each a letter. I am surprised how much they love them :)

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.