Advent Countdown to Christmas!

With the start of the Advent season this Sunday, I wanted to do something special for Carmen to countdown to CHRIST-mas.  Last year, I found a bunch of fun ideas but since we weren't spending the holidays here we didn't do any of them.  One of my favorite that stayed with me last year was this pin on pinterest.

I present to you our Advent Countdown to CHRIST-mas!

The general idea behind this is as follows:
1. find 24 books that you already own (I did all the Christmas books we own plus some other cute ones.  I also only did 23 since I decided to follow the actual advent calendar that always starts on Sunday so that would be the 2nd of December this year.  This works out better for us since we will be celebrating her birthday at her Papa's house the night before.)
2. wrap them up individually
3. put them under your tree or a tree in their room (while she has a little tree in her room, I opted to put them under the bigger tree in the living room since she was sleeping)
4. let them pick a book a night during advent to open and read.

This is right down my budget conscious alleyway! No buying anything but wrapping paper and only real cost is time, which it didn't take very long.  My only problem is that we've been really busy this week with family in town and preparing for little Miss Carmen's 2nd birthday party Saturday, so this wrapping session didn't start until late last night and I stayed up WAY later than this pregnancy lady should have. I enjoyed it though.  I put some holiday music and plopped down on the floor in front of the tree.  It was just too late to add hot cocoa to the mix.

Carmen was SO excited to see the "presents" under the tree.  She immediately went over and started naming all the characters on the wrapping paper!  Go me for picking out the right wrapping papers for her this year!  I had to explain a couple times that we can't open any yet and that we'll start on Sunday.  She did carry one or two of the books around the living room a couple times but put them back each time.

Here she is bedhead crazy hair inspecting the books...

And another picture of her later on once we tamed the wild hair and changed her on our way to pick up Grandpa or "EeePa" as she calls him. As her shirt says, she truly is the greatest present ever!  She's my little girl, who was due 2 years ago today but just like her stubborn self refused to join us until she was ready 2 days later.  I feel so blessed that she chose us to be her parents!  Love that silly face!

Happy Crafting and Holiday Season!

What is a tradition(s) your family enjoys during the holidays?