our new Christmas tradition

I've been meaning to post this idea for a while now and I just didn't get around to it. I love Christmas advent calendars. I wanted to create one that would be meaningful, inexpensive and wouldn't take a lot of time. (I love to sew but I didn't want to get into a project right before Christmas)

So I searched online for some ideas and came across this idea from Martha Stewart. I changed some things here and there and I'm happy with the way it turned out.

I bought 12 pairs of baby Christmas socks, put numbers on them and hung them on a ribbon, that's it!

Aaron and I wrote things that we love about each of our kids. It worked out great because they each got 8 turns each so we had no fights there. We put all the little cards in a Christmas tin under our tree and I will put them in our Christmas journal to keep. You could put scriptures, stories, candy, activities for each day in December to do as a family...lots of ideas. You can do something different each year if you wanted to. I'm looking forward to this new Christmas tradition!

Materials I used:

-the numbers are digital brushes from Ali Edwards that you can find at designerdigitals.com.

-the ribbon is red and green polka dot May Arts ribbon

-I used those Contact hanger things from 3M so I wouldn't have nail holes

-I got the socks from Old Navy. They range in sizes from 6 months to 3-6 years. You could do a mix of kid and adult socks as well. Now that Christmas is over, you could score some good deals right now for next year.

-I thought about using mini clothespins to hang the socks but I just used some mini bulldog clips I already had. These are Tim Holtz ones I got at the scrapbook store but you can get these at Staples.

-I downloaded the "What I love about you" cards for free from Oprah.com. You could make your own in Photoshop as well, that would be really cute! I just stamped the B, P and H on there.