12 Days of Christmas Advent

Hi! Its me again - I guess I am feeling ambitious this season. Here I am with another idea. It came to me while driving my daughter to school last week. I was listening to an inspirational station on my radio and a listener called in to share a family tradition. She said that every year they do 12 days of Christmas where every day you open a gift and tell the person something you love or are thankful for about them. She did not elaborate as to when the 12 days started. Of course my husband and I had to google it and find out that the 12 days of Christmas technically begins on Christmas day. Well, I didn't like that idea. I love the idea of a countdown to Christmas - a shortened version of the advent calendar if you will. So then my thoughts moved to how to incorporate this idea into my decor. Numbers are so "in" right now so I loved the idea of having the numbers somewhere. I decided to put them on my favorite chippy French piece that I sort of treat like my mantle right now as we do not have a fireplace :(. At first I was thinking put little items in little bags. Well, my husband put a cobash on that - he said it was hard enough to find gifts and to worry that they will fit in a little bag - too difficult. So we came up with a system for our family of 3. We chose to put little scrolls in each box where we write what we are thankful about...cute mini scrolls

When I say mini, these measure about 2 inches. So Day 1, my husband gave me and my daughter a gift and a scroll to open. Day 2, it will be Jackie, my daughters turn and Day 3 my turn and then we repeat. We started it last night and it was really special. It may be a keeper as far as family tradition.

At first I was thinking little craft paper bags with handles and then clothespinning a number tag to each bag. Well, no kraft bags - only white at Michaels when I went. I wasn't about to shop around as it was already an ambitious tradition to pull off as it was. I was walking down the cake aisle and saw these treat boxes with scalloped top! OMG - so cute! They had clear "windows" in the front which I covered with these numbered tags. I was going to do something homemade for the number tags, but then found these chalkboard number tags in Christmas 70% clearance - perfect size and shape to cover the windows. Love it when a plan comes together!

Too cute! If I had to be ultra critical, I would prefer each tag to have the circle dot pattern around each number - but hey - it all came together so well and I ran with it this year. So here they are all lined up - the size fits perfectly!