Golly, it's December, where has 2011 gone? Today I have hung our new Advent calendar, our countdown to Christmas. Advent Sunday was last week, when churches light the first candle, for
Hope, on the Advent crown, but throughout December we mark each day in a small way. As a child I had a traditional paper Advent calendar with a little door to open each day to reveal a small picture, a star, a crib, maybe a donkey or my favourite, an angel. Calendars then started to contain chocolate in each window and a wide variety of fabric calendars, wooden chest of drawers calendars, Advent candles.....appeared. And who could forget the wonderful
Blue Peter Advent crown, a wonder of tinsel, wire coat hangers and almost safe candles? This year I made this calendar with a printed panel and we are going to use it to make a charity donation.
Each day we will put money in the appropriate pocket according to how good the day has been (a variation on the "well-fed" jar we have where we add a few coins if we have eaten well that day and the money collected helps those who don't eat well daily). Today, the 1st December, we are going to the historic city of Lincoln, meeting up with DD and my scrumptious Sam, having lunch out and maybe doing a little shopping - that's going to be worth quite a few coins to kickstart our collecting.
At the weekend I will start to decorate the house, before that I have a little production line going:
not seasonal colours and thankfully not needed for Christmas...
