Creating A New Holiday Tradition

Can you believe it is already the 7th of December?? I sure can't! The last week of November we started getting all of our holiday decorations out at the house (which is certainly one of my favorite times of the year!) As we were getting everything out I told Kipper one thing we have never done is an Advent Calendar. After talking about it I turned to my trusty inspiration, Pinterest, and within 30 minutes I had a plan!

I went to Hobby Lobby and just wondered the aisles of Christmas until I decided on all the supplies. I purchased a strand of basic evergreen garland, a make it yourself advent calendar and 24 miniature stockings. It didn't hurt that everything was 50% off either!

I cut the numbers off the calendar and glued them on to the stockings for each day. Yes, this does seem odd, but if I wanted enough numbers to cover all of the days I would have had to buy several packages of all the other numbers Hobby Lobby sold (which were NOT 50% off) So to make this project budget friendly this is the route I went, which worked great!

For the display of the stockings I folded the garland in half, fluffed it and hung on the wall in this random spot that I always want to put something, I just never had. Needless to say, this worked out perfectly and it is right on the entry hall as you come in the house!

 Now for what is IN each of the stockings! Because we don't have kids and it would just be Kipper and I doing it I decided to get creative. I came up with 24 questions that both Kipper and I would answer separately. Each day we would pull out the slips of paper and read to each other what we wrote. I wish I would have kept the list of all the questions, but I didn't. As soon as we get through all of them I will put the complete list, but here are some examples.

• What is your favorite Christmas memory from your childhood?
• Gift you have been most excited to give?
• Eggnog or Cinder?
• Favorite Christmas movie?
• Favorite Holiday tradition as an adult? 
• What did you ask Santa for this year?
• Favorite line from a Christmas movie?
• If you could give your spouse ANYTHING this Christmas, what would that be?
• Give or Receive?
• What is a Christmas tradition you would like to start? 
• Christmas song you wish they would stop playing on the radio?
• The holidays are a time to...

 I am really glad we did this because everyday I look forward to going home and having those few moments with Kipper. While some of the questions are silly, it has been special to hear what we each choose to write down. Almost all of the answers have been an amazing reflection of how much we really love each other. (even though Kipper keeps asking where his "prize" is each day because as a kid he got a piece of candy or something each day!  lol) 

After Christmas I think I am going to make a scrapbook page or something out of them so we can look back at them years later. The best part of how I made this is next year we can come up with a whole new plan on what we will pull out each day!