One of the blogs that I go to daily is
Christmas With The Cricut .....they have amazing ideas over there....every day.
One of them that I took and made my own is this advent calendar tree by Tammy...The tutorial on how to make the sour cream containers is
here. I can't remember if she goes more into detail on there or on her personal blog. :-)
Here's my take on it!
I have one of those stacks of paper that has just Christmas papers in it.....it came in really handy this year when I finally decided to do a bunch of Christmas projects lol I took an assortment of blues because that is what my house is done in.....any colors that you like would work well.
I decided to use dark blue and white for that tags....once again because I like blues and whites....also because I like snowflakes and I knew already that I wanted to use my snowflakes cuttlebug folder. :-) Tammy had used her Gypsy to make tags that had double numbers on them, but I don't have a Gypsy and I didn't have Design Studio at the time either (I'm going to try and make some for next year like that hehe) I also didn't have the same cart that she used for the letters......but if you look, most of the carts have letters, and I'm sure you can find something that would work. :-)
First we decided that we were going to do family activites instead of candies.....for a couple reasons really.....(1) it's really hard to get four peices of candy into these cute sour cream containers lol and (2) it would be pretty expensive to put four peices of candy into every one of these sour cream containers. :-) Besides, we really like the idea of teaching the boys that Christmas isn't just about candy and getting things.....it's about giving and doing things for family and doing things together as a family. :-)
So yah! I made a list of all the things that we wanted to do in the month of December....of course some were doubled, and some were really simple because we can't do something amazing and time consuming VERY SINGLE day.....I'm just not up for that lol We did things like bake cookies, listen to Christmas music, watch Christmas movies, go on a walk around the neighborhood and look at Christmas lights....whatever works for your family.....and if you like the candy idea...by all means.....put candy in them! :-D That's always fun too! :-D Then I printed up a calendar for December of Calendar Creator (LOVE that program) and filled in all the dates since I was going to have to cordinate the numbers and the dates.....which also if you don't want to have to pay attention to this I would suggest the candy too. I did candy for my Dad and sisters in Spokane and it was much faster because I didn't have to pay attention to this. lol
For the tags I took the Base Camp cart becase I liked the stamp feature that it had and that I could cut the numbers out in the retangle feature also......and I figured out how many blue and how many white 'stamps' I needed and began cutting away. Then I wrote down all the numbers and figured out how many of each white and blue I needed....and paid really close attention to the double numbers here......and cute away with those. Then I got out my CuttleBug and my Snowflakes and Textile embossing folders.....I embossed the white withe the Snowflakes and the blue with the Textile. I wish I had thought to take pictures of these....I'll get better at this I promise.....they were so pretty. :-) And then I glued them all together and punched a hole in the corner with my crop-a-dile from stampin up and tied a light blue ribbon through it to tie to the tree. I got the tree at Dollar Tree for like $2....it was perfect for what I was using it for.....someday I'll get a nicer version for it, but it works for now. :-)
*I forgot to take pics of the other two that I did. I made one if bright greens and cherry reds for my sisters and Dad that live in Spokane...it was mainly for Kara, but I hope they enjoyed it too. :-)
And I also made one for my niece and nephew in California in dark red and cream colors because that's what my sister likes. :-)
