Advent Activity Bags

I did these last year and I’m doing them again with a few modifications to make it run more smoothly!

Last year I was heavy on the home-made, time-intensive activity options, this year I am reining it in and replacing them with activities that are easier and quicker to pull together and less daunting for me!

I browsed my Christmas Pinterest board for ideas again but also used some things that are unique to our family….

• ·         Write letters to Santa (we do this on the 1^st to give me time to rustle up their request if at all possible…. They ask for one thing for them, one for someone they love and something for the whole world)
• ·         Make Christmas biscuits (ambiguous enough so that if I feel like putting together the ingredients for the Rudolph cupcakes I can, or if it boils down to cookie cutters and butter biscuits that fits too!)
• ·         Set up for a party (we aren’t spending Christmas with my parents this year so will be having a special pre-Christmas rendevue with nibbles and drinks to exchange gifts)
• ·         Visit the Christmas market (an annual special event to ride the enormous old carousel, browse the shops and eat hot-dogs by the fountain!)
• ·         Make hot chocolate with marshmallows in (Idris LOVES hot chocolate so this is for him!)
• ·         Make a gingerbread house (with the kit from Ikea – told you I wasn’t doing homemade this year!)
• ·         Visit Hooties to look at the lights (a warehouse near us with a darkened area for trees, lights and inflatable decorations)
• ·         Lolly stick snowflakes
• ·         Paper village scene for the windows
• ·         M and m’s nativity poems – make to give to friends
• ·         Call some family to wish them the best of the season
• ·         Decorate oranges with cloves and ribbons
• ·         Make candy cane mice
• ·         Make thank you notes ready to go (these will cover all the children in one – separate ones have proved over ambitious to get sent out in the past!)
• ·         Take a box of food to the food bank
• ·         Make oreo-pops
• ·         Hama bead snowflakes
• ·         Make paper chains
• ·         Make mince pies
• ·         Make paper snowflakes
• ·         Make strawberry santas
• ·         Toast marshmallows on the fire
• ·         Decorate the tree (always done mid-December the day after Daddy’s birthday)
• ·         Hang up the stockings!

Apart from the few things that are date fixed like decorating the tree and writing letters, I have made a little stack of the papers in the cupboard and I will pick one to go in every day depending on whether I have the resources needed or the energy required!!

The bags came from Ikea last year, and they have three chocolates in each of them from a variety of Christmas chocolates that I found around and about…. This year’s new addition is a Christmas joke in each bag – I had a real giggle finding jokes to write out and I know the girls will find them hilarious, especially Faith, our resident joker!

I’d love to hang them all down the banister with the tinsel and the lights but last year Idris quickly worked out that they contain fun things to eat and I fear that all the chocolates would get scoffed in a day if I did so they are in the dresser to be drip fed!!