every year, a group of local friends has a secret santa swap. i’ve written about it before—it is one of my favorite things we do all year.
this year, one of the questions we were asked to respond to in a thread on our private bulletin board was, “what have you always wanted that you don’t have now (think big!)”. my recipient said “a reusable advent calendar” so i determined to make that happen.
the thing is, i didn’t want to sew it, because in order to be useful this year, i had to deliver it two weeks before the deadline for the swap, and if it was sewn she’d know who it was from. so i decided to throw her off my track. i decided to make it using materials i scavenged from rudi’s art supplies:
this is one of his spare canvases, which i painted using the nativity silhouette collage project i found at a blog called that artist woman. i figured if a 1st grader can do it, i probably could too. :D instead of cutting and pasting on the silhouette, i painted it on. the star is made from a piece of foam core board i saved from cutting out the headpiece for ella’s halloween costume, i painted it yellow then put some gold glitter over it and a piece of velcro on the back. i put more little pieces of stick-on velcro all around the edge of the canvas, numbered them, and put a piece of velcro on the top of the manger. the star moves from day to day thru advent and on christmas day it goes on top of the manger.
i wish i had gotten better pictures of it. i took this one when it was drying on the bottom of rudi’s easel. i’ve had to be patient all this time to show it off—if i had posted about it before today, my recipient would have known it was from me!
this was a very simple and rewarding project. i might have to do something like this for my own family. that would make FOUR advent-counting systems in our house. LOL
*do you participate in some kind of secret swap? if so, i’d love to hear about it! our rules are that the gift can cost no more than $20 and must be made by hand. there is a kid’s swap in our group too—i’ll show you the gift ella made when we know her recipient as gotten it!
