I'm very excited about this month for many reasons.  Not only is it a countdown to celebrate and give thanks for the birth of Jesus, but it's such a beautiful time of year to laugh and share with family and friends.  I'll also get to see my little N make his acting debut as Joseph in his school Christmas program in just a couple of weeks!  This will be N's sixth Christmas!  I cannot believe that!  And, it'll be W's second.  Over the past six Christmases, I've developed several little holiday traditions with the kids, as many of you likely have.  I am so looking forward to getting to those traditions (and even throwing in some new ones) this month.

This morning the kids woke up to find their Christmas Countdown Socks hanging outside their bedroom in our hallway.  I usually do some sort of Advent and month countdown activity with them in December, but this year I decided to change it up a bit.  It was so economical, too!  I spent about $20 on the whole project! 

I bought twelve pairs of socks from Target's Dollar Spot section (a combo of both kids and adult socks), two packages of festive holiday ornament clips, and a container of red wired garland.  Then I took some old inkjet address labels I had and cut each label in half to make 24 squares and hand wrote each day's number and stuck it on a sock.  Voila!  Everyday from now until Christmas Eve, the kids will find a fun little surprise in their Countdown to Christmas Socks!  Today it was a mini fruit-flavored candy cane.  And after eating a full breakfast of eggs and raisin toast, they got to enjoy their treat!

 

Then it was time to put out our new Advent tree calendar I purchased the other day from my new favorite department store.  The kids love the magnet feature of the calendar and each day they'll switch off putting up the day's number!

 

Oh, and I also felt it appropriate to bust out my new handmade holiday tee.  Well, the tee is manufactured by Target, but it is semi-handmade since I did manage to iron the applique quite nicely!

    

What sorts of holiday traditions have you started on this first day of December?