Advent Project

WARNING, when my sister and I get together we get crafty.  Amanda is a scrapbook queen and always dazzles me with her creativity.  While I was visiting we decided we needed a craft and we went to AC Moore and browsed but came up with nothing.  So I was telling my sister about this article in my Parenting magazine I had read on the plane and showed her an idea for advent cards.  Well we decided to tackle them and add our own spin.  The directions said to go to parents.com/adventcards

we decided we did not want to use their cards so we cut squares and circles out of pretty Christmas paper

and 2"x2" squares out of white card stock and wrote down the activities we wanted to do with our kids

we covered the card stock squares with clear packing tape and rounded the edges with a punch

then we painted all the squares with a mixture of 1 part dish soap (we used Dawn with oil of olay) and 2 parts acrylic paint (gray).  It takes very little paint so we did 5 ml of soap and 10 ml of paint and had plenty left over.  Once the first coat dried we added a second coat.  We tested it out on a plain square first and used a coin to scratch it off and it works wonderful.  We were absolutely giddy! 

so here we are painting the cards

drying

Amanda AKA Martha Stewart

we bought little clothespins and I decided to hand mine in front of my french doors- the directions said to glue the scratch off part to the card and we decided to use Velcro so we could take them off and repaint them or move the activities around

I embellished the cards a little with some rub ons, stickers, glitter and buttons

I know the kids are going to have a blast scratching the paint off to see which activity we are doing

the possibilities are endless you could make scratch off cards for a party to see which type of prize they get

some of the activities on our advent calendar:

make Christmas craft

drive and look at Christmas lights

make cookies

drink hot chocolate

snuggle on the couch

read Christmas story

discuss what we are thankful for

have a dance party

picnic for dinner

play a family game

If you want to see how Amanda finished and displayed her cards take a look at her blog.