This season, inspired by Andrea, I created an advent calendar full of activities instead of chocolate (the kids aren’t deprived, they still have the chocolate one too), with one thing for each day up until December 25th. I thought it was such a great idea, so I used a variety of papers and leftover gift bags to make envelopes, strung up a cord across our living room entertainment unit, and used clothes pegs to hang them.

So far they’ve been a big hit, even if some of the activities are quieter than the others. On day one we started simple, doing manicures and pedicures for Hayley and Breanna. They loved that, especially Breanna who is becoming very girly about makeovers and whatnot.

On day two we wrote letters to Santa. Hayley decided she’d like a Fur Real dog to go with the cat she got last year and Breanna wanted a rocket ship. I’m sure Santa will be able to find both lying around his workshop.

Day three brought out the scissors and they made some paper snowflakes, some of which are decorating the wall over the couch:

Day four was a HUGE hit (and was not photographed for obvious reasons) because they got to have a candlelit bubble bath. They thought it was the coolest thing ever and unfortunately it has caused them to become completely unimpressed with regular old run-of-the-mill baths now. Alas.

For day five we had Family Game Night – Wii Edition. We played a couple of party games that I had received for review (look for that on the review blog later this week), then moved on to Wii Sports. Somehow it seems that my kids are bowling demons and they showed up both George and myself. Hayley threw numerous strikes and Breanna nearly made me faint as she ended up throwing turkeys (three strikes in a row) with ease. We played in teams; Breanna and I won both games against George and Hayley and I fully confess that our win had very little to do with me.

Day six was the day we decorated the Christmas tree, something that always goes over well. This year was especially fun since they’re now both old enough to understand that you generally put one ornament per branch instead of, you know, ten on one branch like other years.

Yesterday was day seven and I needed something relatively quick and easy since I had a Governing Board meeting at the school. I slipped in the paper for making pine cone bird feeders. Those are fun and so simple to do, albeit a bit messy.

All you need to do is tie a string to the top of a pine cone, coat the edges with peanut butter, and then just roll the whole thing in a bowl of birdseed. Once they were both done with their feeders (two each), I tied them all to a cord and strung them out on the balcony.

Today we ended up doing a pizza picnic in the living room with a movie (George chose Monsters Inc. since we’re saving Christmas movies/shows for another Advent day). The kids love having picnics in the living room and naturally pizza is always a hit so that worked out well.

I haven’t decided which activity to slip inside tomorrow’s envelope. If we get the big snowfall we’re supposed to be getting, maybe we’ll go for building a snowman.

I’m loving this Advent Calendar and will definitely keep all my envelopes to use again next year!

On Sunday I was finally able to turn the living room from “meh” to “holly jolly”. In fact there’s so much holly and so much jolly that I can’t stop smiling when I walk in the room and really, I don’t do that often.

I pulled the boxes out of storage in the morning and when I let the kids read their activity in their Advent Calendar it told them we were going to decorate the tree. They were pretty excited and they love to help. While I do dream of one day owning a ginormous tree, I must admit that the 4-foot tree is really the perfect height for young kids; even Breanna can reach the top branches when it’s on the floor, and I have to say it’s nice to move it up out of the way so that no one falls into it while running around or playing with the dog (not that anything of that sort would ever happen here, I’m sure, ahem).

I also have the lights up around my china hutch which is one of my favorite decorations and I usually keep lighting that up well into the late winter just because it looks pretty and gives the living room some nice soft light. In the meantime, I had a few spare strings of lights so I even put one in the corner of the kids’ room, another in the main bedroom, and one in over the kids’ computer in the living room.

Combined with the other decorations (homemade paper snowflakes, wreath on the door, Santa’s clothesline, snowmen, etc), it’s all I can do to keep from blasting Christmas music all day long. I’m feeling so festive it’s disgusting.

But don’t worry, it will pass. Nothing kills the holiday spirit like knowing you still need to do all your Christmas shopping.

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Just like every year since it began, I’m taking part in Holidailies and will be updating most days (probably not all days since it is the holiday season) between December 7th and January 6th so you can expect a lot of total drivel brilliance over here throughout. Are you taking part too?

Halloween of 2009 ended up being far better than I originally anticipated. For one thing, I felt like absolute crap on the 30th and most of the day on the 31st. I was really worried about whether I could actually manage to walk around with the kids trick-or-treating. The thing is, Halloween is and always has been one of my favorite days of the year. Christmas and birthdays are great what with all the presents and family stuff but for me it’s far more fun to get dressed up and eat obscene amounts of candy. Because of that I was actually pissed off that my body would dare to fail me by being under the weather on Halloween of all days.

Maybe it was adrenaline or something but I managed to perk up once I started gathering everyone’s costume pieces – including my own. George doesn’t dress up but Hayley went as a vampire, Breanna was a wee pirate, and I was the usual witch. Next year I might change it up and bring back the Catwoman costume (original Catwoman in purple, not Michelle Pfeiffer’s leather Catwoman – I’m not THAT brave!). We met up with our friends who were escorting their daughter-turned-devil for trick-or-treating.

We were also really lucky because it had poured rain for most of the morning and afternoon and I thought it was going to be a pretty soggy Halloween while awkwardly trying to hold an umbrella over everyone, but as we got in the car to go meet our friends, we were greeted with this beautiful sky.

That was really lucky.

We went to our usual trick-or-treating location, a nice big housing development where most doors are wide open with candy offerings. Our own area pretty much sucks, so we avoid the neighborhood altogether. We were out for about an hour and collected quite the haul; I think that for the sake of our kids’ teeth, we’ll have to step in and uh, “dispose” of some of it ourselves. I’m just thinking of their health of course. Really.

We ended the night by going to George’s parents’ house. They don’t get many people at the door so they usually divide up the leftover candy between the two kids and we know that they can eat them without inspecting them first.

Luckily, they were both tired enough from all the walking around and excitement that they both fell asleep within about 15 minutes of bedtime, sugar high and all. George and I intended to watch a horror movie, most likely The Last House on the Left but we were too tired so we’ll give it a shot tonight if bedtime goes smoothly (and early) enough. I don’t want to traumatize anyone by having one of the kids walk into the living room right in the middle of a scary scene.

I hope everyone had an excellent Halloween with lots of candies!

By the way, if you’re wondering about the title, it comes from this.

Total classic from my good old goth days, dancing beside the smoke machine!

In other news, I’m – as usual – participating in NaBloPoMo so you can expect a post a day for the month of November. Maybe that will kick-start my creativity again!