Activities Advent Calendar

{one of last year's advent activities, mulled wine by the tree}

I look forward to the holiday season all year long. I start playing Christmas music on Thanksgiving, put my decorations up early, sip my favorite holiday tea while addressing my Christmas cards, and I feel so festive and peaceful as I enjoy each of these small traditions. For me, the holidays are all about experiences. But somehow, the calendar fills up, things get hectic, and I used to find myself scrambling or forgetting to enjoy the simple joys of the season. So, for our first married Christmas 2 years ago, I decided I wanted to be intentional about celebrating the holidays and I talked to Flavio about creating an activities advent calendar. Did you grow up with an advent calendar? It's one of my favorite traditions. We wrote down 25 things we wanted to do to celebrate the season, like have a romantic candlelit picnic by the tree, watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, pack hot chocolate and drive around to see the lights, etc. and we stuck each activity into the 25 stockings in our advent calendar, along with 2 little pieces of chocolate for each day. We planned our activities so that during the week the experiences were small and no-pressure, and we left bigger outings, like ice skating, to the weekends. Yesterday, December 1, we picked out our Christmas tree and decked the halls while listening to Christmas music. Tonight's experience was to rock out and dance crazy to "Feliz Navidad" - which Guiri thought was scary. I'm excited to document this year's advent activities on the blog - My goal is to post most days, but work is crazy and we'll see how it goes.. I am feeling so merry already!

PS: In case you are looking for a cute calendar, this is our Hats and Mittens Advent Calendar, which I love, for sale here.