Winner and a count down

The winner of the Scarlet lime collection is:

Rbarakat said...
What I'm excited about December is everyone will be home for the holidays!!! NO school, errands appointments, good food,music and fellowship!Ummm fabulous lo's ladies! WHo wouldn't love a little scarlet lime!!!
December 2, 2009 12:22 PM

Congrats girl! Send me your info at hsonboul@gcdstudios.com Subject line "Scarlet lime kit"

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Christmas Countdown

By Grace Tolman

Images were removed for publication in the Scrapbook trends Holiday 2010 issue. Keep a look out for it :)

When I was given the assignment to make a countdown calendar I was a little bit scared. I've never made a countdown calendar before and with all the cute and fun ways this idea has been done before, I didn't have any others that would be fresh and exciting. But after browsing through my favorite stores I got the idea to make a countdown bucket.

I got the bucket from the dollar spot at Target, then I headed to my local dollar store where I purchased the Popsicle sticks, moss and flower foam. I cut out the many wonderful pattern papers from our Christmas collection into circles, matted them with the designs' coordinating solid colors and cut it out with a scallop scissors. I added colors and designs to the bucket with some GCD studios ribbon and white gross grain ribbon. I love that GCD studios ribbon are self adhesive. It took out the work on me trying to get that adhered to the bucket. I also added a journaling block (also from the collection) as my title block and placed that in the middle of the bucket.
I added glittered numbers from the collection, as well as a red one from a separate glitter alpha pack. When I did my research on advent calendars and countdown projects, I found that most of them were about storing little presents and in most cases, candies in each number. While that idea seems fun, I didn't want my children to equate Christmas too much with the candies and gifts as opposed to Christmas being the season for giving and serving.


So I picked 12 things that we can do to show our love for our family and opportunities we can give service to our friends. Below are the 12 things I picked for us to do....

12. Make cookies to give to our friends
11. Send out our Christmas cards to family and friends
10. Write our letters to Santa
9. Pick a movie to watch together and eat some popcorn too.
8. Make ornaments to add to our Christmas tree
7. Go through out toys and see which ones we can donate to our local Goodwill.
6. Call our cousins out of state to wish them a Merry Christmas
5. Bring Cookies to our friends' house.
4. Visit our temple and see the Christmas lights displayed.
3. Pass out Christmas cards and cookies to our neighbors
2. Sing some Christmas carols.
1. Read the nativity story from the Bible.



To add these things to each of my numbered sticks, I printed my list on cardstock, trimmed it and wrapped it around each stick, then tied an embroidery floss around it. I love that this project was both easy and meaningful to me. I can't wait for my family and I to start feeling the meaning of this Holiday while we do our Christmas countdown.

Heidi's thoughts:
Isn't this just adorable??! This whole project is under $10 to make and it would be fun to make with little ones.
Starting on the 16th of Dec... we start the count down. We hope you find the time to make this or something close to it ;)
Thanks GRACE!
~H