Advent calendars

This year is definitely the year of the advent calendar in our house. Last year I bought Adam a couple of Lego sets, split them up into 24 parcels and gave him a few blocks each day. This was slightly frustrating for him I think so I wanted to do something similar but slightly less mean this year.

I have wrapped up a number of small prezzies for him again this year but there is more variety this time around.

A while ago I told you about the bag that I had starting to make to contain these parcels. Since then I have managed to attach the pockets to the side panels. I firstly sewed each of the pockets along the bottom to ensure that they would be strong enough to contain a small something.

I tried to line these up with each other to make them as straight as possible before sewing them on. This was really tricky to do as I had to line them up the right way around but then flip them upside down and inside out to get them to be able to attach them.

I folded each of the sides in for each pocket and sewed around the remaining 3 sides in a contrasting colour. I sewed in grey thread on the red panels and red thread on th grey panels. This does slightly highlight the wonky-ness of some of the panels but I can put that down to the bag being homemade!

Once these were all on all of the sides (including the edges), I added a red band to the top edge of each of the panels.

Originally I thought I might be able to use one long piece of canvas for the whole of the bottom and two ends of the bag, however I decided that this would be too difficult to work around the corners. I knew that I could attach these if I had them as separate pieces. The way that I would attach them was in the same way as I would attach the sides of the name cubes that I have made in the past.

Once the red band was attached to each of the panels, I needed to add the handles to the sides. I measured these to be in the middle and matched them up on both sides before sewing these back and forth a few times to endure that they would be secure. They don't need to be too strong as they wont be used too much but might need to be fairly strong as the bag will contain all of the prezzies.

The sides of the bag ended up as below.

I did use these panels then to measure out a lining, this is in the red fabric. All pieces are made and ready to go but I ran out of time before the 1st December to attach this.

All I had time to do from here was to fill the bag and give it to Adam to start opening! I think I am now more excited about his bag of parcels than he is!

The bag was perhaps slightly over-estimated in size for the parcels that I have got. Next year I will have to find things with bigger boxes! I padded it out a little with some tissue paper to make it look slightly fuller! I even hid some of his prezzies in the outside pockets.

I will have to line the bag before next year!

Adam has also wrapped me some advent presents this year. He wasn't sure how to present these and has been nagging me for ages that he wants to have more Xmas decs around the house, especially in other rooms. With this as his excuse, we have bought a small tree for the kitchen. This has gone on the worktop in the corner and looks amazing with all of my prezzies underneath. It almost feels like Christmas already!

So exciting! Happy advent everyone!

I do have just one more thing to tell you about. This year we did make one more calendar between us. This one was done for my mum and dad.

We have wrapped up 25 prezzies for them. Most are bottles of beer but on 1 December we also included two "half pint" glasses. They look like a pint glas but actually cut in half down the middle. Well we wanted to make sure that they will share!

They both seem pretty pleased with it and they are opening the parcels each evening when they get home from work. They are taking it in turns and playing fair which is good!

We had great fun making this one and are really pleased that it is being enjoyed.

For this one we made the tags to hang around the edges. We punched out large circles and then used my festive hole punches to make the gaps to attach the ribbons. These were either small Xmas trees or stockings

I'm really pleased that they seem to be enjoying it. This is definitely my favourite month of the year. A present every day for myself and my loved ones. What can be better!

We both wait until the evening to open our prezzies to each other so we've not opened anything for the 3rd yet but here is what we have so far from stash

I got socks on day 1 and a small jar of sweets yesterday and I gave Adam a little Lego man on day 1 and a new battery for his camera yesterday. I also have my normal advent calendar that I made with my mum some years ago. This one has small chocolates in and fabric decorations to stick on a tree every day. I also got thie one below from one of my bosses at work.

It's lovely. I feel so lucky.

I'm looking forward to getting home and seeing what today brings! So exciting! I hope that you are all enjoying your advent.