Christmas is Upon Us!

Can you believe that it's only 36 days until Christmas?!?! Like most previous years, I am fairly organised as I REFUSE to do any Christmas shopping (unless absolutely necessary) in December, for a couple of reasons:

1. Shopping in December makes me spend a lot more money on Christmas due to 'impulse' buys; and
   
2. I just can't hack shopping with sooo many people whose common courtesy seems to disappear in the lead up to Christmas

Apart from the shopping part, I really love Christmas. I love spending time with my family and friends and I particularly love decorating the tree and setting up the advent calendar.

A couple of people have asked me whether I will be making a new advent calendar for this Christmas, but how can I when the one I made last year was so adorable!


My sister and I each made one of these after seeing it in a Christmas Card magazine. We bought a cricut machine and the bags, tags and boxes cartridge from the USA and waited patiently for it to arrive. While we were waiting, we made the tree from a couple of bits of square dowel, painted it white and put our little screws in to hold onto our cute little bags.

Once the cricut machine arrived, we set to work making the bags and covering them with an array of Christmas papers and embellishments. Finally, to finish it off, we went shopping for an ornament to sit on the top. The stand is just a gift box I picked up for $2, with a hole cut in the top to stand the dowel tree in.

The bags are a fairly decent size and fit at least 6 small chocolates in them:


I always try to make sure that I put the same number of each chocolate in the bag so that Matty and I don't fight, although I think this year I may put an extra one in each bag for our baby (which of course I will have to eat!)