Advent

Yesterday was supposed to be the start of our Advent Adventure. (Yes, I know that the "real" advent started in November...we are doing December though). Oh, wait, I said "supposed to be". Yep, Day 1 is over and we're already behind!
I started in October by buying a do it yourself advent calendar (it was just a plain cardboard thing with 25 drawers-just brown). My mom wondered why I started so early. This is why. It took me that long to make the basic thing and I'm not even 100% happy with it. It's cute, just not what I pictured in a vague Martha Stewart-ish kind of way. But that's okay, I didn't picture my living room having a bare sheetrock wall during the Christmas season either-but that's why I ripped out a wall at the end of December. With a gazillion things to do (Advent stuff, Nathan's birthday and party, etc etc etc) I figured it'd be good to start a major project in my living room.
Anyways, back to the Advent calendar:
In October (when the stores start seriously putting out all of the Christmas stuff in hopes of sucking you in early) I found something similar to this at Hobby Lobby (except it was brown-in the way a paper bag is brown):

Then, I spent FORever obsessing over how to cover it. I tried painting it (so that it would look like the one above before I covered it), I determined that painting each box inside and out wasn't really feasible in my world, but I got the important parts painted....and it looked a little like this one...
Then I obsessed over paper and ribbon. I'll spare you all of the details but I finally chose some contrasting papers to alternate, then I made little papers with numbers on them (stenciled) to represent each day of December. Inside each box is a paper that has an activity related to the Christmas season in it. Sometimes kind of big but mostly little stuff.
Here is the finished product:

Not perfect but perfectly fine. Now, we just have to get started! *blushing* It's the 5th and we've done NOTHING on our calendar officially (my hubby did put up the outside lights last night which is one of them but I think we were supposed to have like hot chocolate with it LOL).  But, my excuse is this: I have been in Birthday party  mode. Next post will show all that we've been doing!