Counting Down to Christmas

Now that Carter is almost 2, I've been thinking alot about creating family traditions. A few weeks ago I saw a post from Thrifty Decor Chick about making an Advent calendar. Growing up, this wasn't something I ever had and so the idea was fairly new to me. What could be more fun than counting down the days til Christmas with a little surprise on each day??? I spotted Martha Stewart's Advent calendar made of Christmas socks and I was hooked! From that day on, I started picking up all colors of Christmas socks at any store I went to. I found a few in the $1 bin at Target, one in the $1 bin at Michael's, several at Wal-Mart, several in the sock section at Target, and some in Carter's sock drawer. I also bought some ribbon and pulled out some metal-rimmed circle tags and colored number stickers from my scrapbooking stash. With about 10 minutes of piecing it all together, and 10 more minutes to attach it to some garland on my railing, here's how it turned out:

Mine definitely isn't as cute as Martha's...but that's to be expected. I just couldn't find cute little brown and white polka-dotted socks for less than $6. So this is the cheapy version. But that's okay. I still like it!

The socks haven't been stuffed yet, but I've been collecting little things for all members of our family. In the collection so far: catnip for Lily, a new toy for Maddie, a toy car for Carter, M&M's for Carter, CARS-themed socks for Carter, a Thomas the Train winter movie for Carter, gum and candy for Cary, nail polish for me, and then written out family activities like baking Christmas cookies, looking at Christmas lights, and other fun stuff like that. I'm hoping that this will be a yearly tradition for us as a family as we count down the days until December 25th!