Advent Calendar - Part 1

I took a little bit of a break from the blog last week. With a baby who decided that 2-5AM were ideal playing hours, I was exhausted. Honestly, there were a few nights last week that I went to bed at 7, same time as the boys. Over the weekend, since Y was here to watch the boys in the morning while I caught up on some sleep, I got started on an Advent calendar for K (and for T, but not for a few years). I know I started a bit late - on Friday, November 29th!! - but I had a few other projects at the end of the month that I needed to get done before I started this, which I'll blog about later.

I'm not joking at all, when I tell you that K has been asking to put the Christmas tree up since last February. Sometime during the spring, I told him that we can't put up the Christmas tree until after Halloween. After his Halloween party, I had just gotten everything cleaned up and was making dinner when he came to the kitchen and said, "whelp, I guess it's time to get the Christmas tree out." He said it like it was some huge chore, and yet obviously he had been waiting for ages for that moment. Poor guy, but I explained a bit further - the tree isn't coming out until December. He took it well, but towards the end of last month, it was a constant barrage of, "What number day is it today? When will it be December?" I figured that if getting the tree out was to be this exciting, the actual day would be exciting as well and he needed a countdown of sorts. I looked online and found a few Advent calendars for inspiration, and also tried to recall the one from my childhood. Then I just went and did whatever I wanted anyway.

I started with the pockets. I decided that I would do only up until Christmas Eve. I imagine that Christmas morning K is going to have little interest in putting on that last decoration - seeing what Santa left him will be much more exciting. I made the pockets 6cm squares. So I cut out a big rectangle that measured 28cm (enough for the pocket plus 1 cm at the top of each row) by 36cm. Then I cut four pocket strips, each 6cm by 36cm.

Then I got to work on the numbers. I bought iron-on felt for this bit. I drew all of the numbers starting with all then ones, then the twos, threes, etc. I wanted them to be as uniform as possible, but knew that they were going to be far from perfect. I'm cool with that for this project.

I slowly filled up the squares with their numbers.

Once they were all on, I took the backing off and iron-ed away (note: this photo is pre-ironing).

Then I sewed a tiny white and green pom-pom trim to the large rectangle.

Eeeek! It's so cute!!

Finally I sewed on the pocket strips and got to work on the tree. The tree is about 36cm wide on the bottom layer and about 40cm tall.

Then I sewed all of the bits onto a huge piece of white felt.

For the tree, I sewed on each of the green layers separately. I don't know how that middle layer got so wonky without me noticing, but it will just have to do. Trees aren't perfect anyway and I figure with the ornaments on, you probably won't be able to notice.

I set it out so that on December 1st, when K woke up he could put the first ornament on. I was sleeping, but apparently K saw it, threw his arms in the air and yelled out, "CHRISTMAS TREEEEEE!!" I love that little guy.

So far, I have only made five ornaments. I figure as long as I make a few each night, I should be able to stay ahead of the game. I figured with the ornaments being so tiny (no more than a 6cm square), they would be quite quick to whip up. I was wrong. This is going to be a labor of love for sure. Wish me luck!!