Holiday Joy

Sometimes I hate small towns. I get these really good ideas to be creative, but it is rare that I can find all of the materials I need to complete my projects. We just don't have the right kind of stores here.

Case in point:

I wanted to make an advent calendar using boxes. Instead of filling each box with a toy or treat, I wanted to fill them with a piece of paper with an activity written on it. These activities would be done as a family. Each day, we would open a box and then do what the paper says. For example, 'make hot chocolate', 'help someone at the store in need of assistance', 'take a break and go for a ride to look at lights', etc....

I needed 24 boxes for the days of Dec. 1 through Dec. 24. However, I could only find paper mache boxes at WalMart, and they only had 11 of them. I had to reorganize my craft and this is what I came up with:

Holiday Joy

I started with 10 plain boxes.
















Then I painted them red, green, white, and brown.
















Then I added embellishments to spell the words 'Holiday Joy'. I mounted them to the wall, and inserted one activity into each box. I chose five activities and Austin chose five. We don't know which activity the other one chose, so that will be a fun surprise. Maybe by next year I will be able to add 13 more boxes and I can complete my original advent idea. For this year, however, we will be doing 10 activities to enrich our holiday joy as a family.