Well I’m finally finished. My Mom and I have gathered up 25 Christmas books to use as our Advent Calendar this year. You can read about some of them here but I also wanted to share with you the final books that we got on Black Friday. I can’t wait to read them all to Lilly and Grace!
When I saw Santa Is Coming To Philadelphia, I almost died. Lilly will go crazy for this book. She knows that some of her favorite people live in Philly and she’s fairly certain that Santa will be in Philly this year too. My Mom and I thought it’d be cute to modify the story to include places that Lilly knows and loves in Philly until she’s a little older and can understand all of the places that are discussed in the story. If you are a Philly fan- get this book!
I found the little magazine holder at Goodwill ($2!) a few months ago and decided it was perfect to house our wrapped book collection. Time escaped me and I didn’t get a change to paint/modify it at all but I still think it’s pretty cute and does it’s job beautifully. When Christmas is over, I think I’ll still paint it and put it up in the girl’s book nook to house books that are too tall for the shelves.
All I used to wrap these books was brown roll paper ($5.00 at Michael’s) and a skein of clearance Christmas yarn ($1.00 at Michael’s). Why Christmas yarn was already on clearance? God only knows. But I’ll take it!
I’ll leave you with a few more titles that were already on the shelves of my parents house, old books I’ve had since I was a child, or ones that were my husbands. Maybe you know some of them but maybe some are new!
Merry {start of} Christmas, everyone! Please share your favorite Christmas stories if there are some you think we need on our list. Anyone else doing something-other-than-chocolate advent calendars this year? Not to knock the chocolate, we’ll certainly have one of those too. Just thought I’d ask.
Slight tangent: I saw on pinterest a cute ornament advent activity where each day you get to open a tiny little burlap sack with a number on it and inside is a new ornament. I LOVE this idea since we collect ornaments, but BECAUSE we collect ornaments I thought this might end up being a bad idea for our family. We’re going on ornament box #5 so I think we have to cool it for awhile in the ornament department. That or buy multiple trees! Or better yet, move to a house with cathedral ceilings like my parents so a 14 foot tree will fit all of our ornaments. Sigh. None of those are happening anytime soon so I better stay away from Crate and Barrel, Pier 1, and all of the other ornament-junkie places I frequent to feed my addiction.
Is it December 1st yet?!
-J
And Foster Makes 5 says
LOVE the Jan Brett books, especially 🙂 They will always remind me of growing up with Christmas anticipation rampant. Also, in our family, each child was given a special ornament or two every year as a gift. Then, when we moved out, we had a healthy start to our own ornament collections as newlyweds! This was definitely one of my favorite traditions.