Advent adventures: day 1

Today we opened the first drawer of our tabletop advent tree. Inside, my children found a tiny trinket to hang on one of its branches and a strip of paper upon which was written a fun and festive activity. There's one of these for every day of Advent - I know that for sure because I came up with the twenty-four ideas, lovingly wrote them out and carefully placed one in each of the tree's diminutive drawers. I'm going to attempt to take a photograph to represent each day's little Advent adventure and post them all here.

Day 1: Learn how to safely light a candle, and then light the Advent candle yourself.

O Christmas tree

And so the countdown to Christmas begins...

We have an Advent candle, a calendar, and a beautiful mini wooden Christmas tree to decorate with little baubles, one for each day of Advent. I know this sounds like a lot, but the excitement of sorting out who is going to open the even numbered windows of the calendar, and who is to decorate the tree on odd numbered days has been fabulous; it doesn't seem over-the-top at all just now.

Daisy was inspired by the wooden Advent tree and decided to make her own. Using it as a template she drew round its outline on thin card and then used watercolour to paint it green. I helped with the cutting out after this.

Much glue and glitter later, the tree was resplendent, baubles and a star adorning its branches. We slotted the two sections together to give the 3d effect and added a small piece of toilet roll cardboard as a sturdy base.

We loved using our new glitter shakers again - you can just see them in the photos. Buddy and Daisy can sparkle-up all manner of items independently with these. Glitter is great any time of year but it's just about essential during the winter festivities. I expect to get much more use out those little shakers over the next month.