Christmas Calendar

At a recent MOPS meeting, one of our fabulous mentors Anne shared with us one of her holiday traditions / planning tricks. Just like me, Anne found herself in "Birthday Season" during the holiday season. Early on she discovered that she really needed to be organized in order to enjoy the month of December and celebrate Christmas all month long. One way she did this was to create a Chrismas Calendar each year on a large piece of butcher paper. It had space at the top for each child to illustrate what Christmas meant to them and at the bottom there was a large calendar that included their scheduled events. Anne has kept each calendar over the years and hangs them up as decorations in her hallway at Christmas time. (She reinforces the corners with packaging tape so that they don't get damaged from hanging -- smart woman!)

Inspired by the oh-so-organized Anne, I ran home to start my calendar. Since I didn't have butcher paper (and since I like things typed), I used Microsoft Publisher to create a large poster and printed it out on separate letter-sized pages. I admit, taping them together was a total pain, but I got it done. A couple of nights ago, I let my girlies decorate it. Ella went to town on it. And Lucie, well, she needed a bit of assistance from Mommy and insisted on using pink.  I think it turned out cute, and the girls loved doing. For kids who can't really create art yet, Anne suggested using their handprints, footprints or fingerprints to make a design. I thought that you could use handprints to make a cute little wreath with green paint.

What a great way to make a memory with your kids AND be organized for the holidays. Thank you Anne!