Advent Calender Craft - Growing Seeds of Love

We're starting a new Advent Calender tradition this year at KATcapers.

The idea evolved organically. I knew that I wanted to use brown envelopes and a pinboard (recycling one that I've had for a while).  When I was out buying paint at Murobond I saw these seed envelopes

Once I started playing around with positioning them on the board I began to reflect on the fact that they were seed envelopes.

Seeds. Growing. Love.

I realized that there was a way to link the anticipation of christmas and the birth of our saviour with the love that we are growing within our little family.  Loving each other is a very important life lesson that Saint Mike and I want to teach our KATs.  Loving each other in spite of our differences.  Knowing that whatever happens, we are here for each other.

So, our Advent Calender has become a ritual that will have significance each year and will produce a 'crop' of love via notes we will write to each other each Advent season.

The way it works is:

1. Each of the KATs writes two notes to their siblings and mum and dad (3 X 8 = 24)
2. The note can be something you love about the person or something you admire about them or something you've appreciated that they've done for you (Littlest KAT draws a picture at the moment as she can't write)
3. Mum and Dad write one note for each KAT and one to each other (2 X 5 = 10)
4. The notes are placed in the envelope randomly (some obviously have two notes per day)
5. Each day we will open the envelope for that date and a family member will get a special message of love
6. Each day the person that gets the note will get a chocolate that they can each eat or give to someone else (hmmmmnnnn we'll see how this goes!!!)
7. Each year we will put the notes in a keepsake box and save them so that as the years pass we can re read them and hopefully cherish them:)

The girls all helped with putting the Advent Calender together - stamping the title, stamping the envelopes, attaching the red striped ribbon. 

I put it all together last night in readiness for today.  It is obviously a couple of days late but this is due to Middle KAT being very unwell over the weekend and ending up in emergency needing anti nausea medication and fluids....she's on the mend now!

Getting this Advent Calender completed is the first thing I have done in the way of Christmas decorating.  Saint Mike is itching to get his lights up.  The KATs are itching to get the inside decorations up.  I think we're going to have some busy evenings around here!

I'd love to know what you think?  Like?? 

Roadtripping to the land of the less fortunate

Today I managed to tick off my last 'to do' of the school year. 

It involved my second road trip in a week out to Auburn (a suburb of Sydney).

The round trip took an hour and a bit and was accompanied by my current favourite Christmas CD by the rather yummy Michael Buble.

Along for the ride today was our Oldest KAT and Middle KAT.  They were there as my 'roadies' and they did a stellar job with minimal complaints.

What was this roadtrip in aid of?  Let me explain...

A couple of months ago I acted on an idea that had been festering away for a while...it involved recycling all the no longer required stationery that our kids accumulate at the end of each school year...you know, the stuff that's perfectly good and COULD be reused the following year...but my how they all love to take the stationery list and go crazy getting NEW bits and bobs!!

What happens to all that perfectly good stationery?  It goes towards my household clutter...filling drawers, spilling out of containers and generally contributing very little in a household that is well catered for already in the colored pens, crayons and marker department.

So instead, I decided to organize a stationery drive and collect all the unwanted 'stationery stuff'' at our small school and take it out to our 'sister' school which is in the starkly underprivileged and heavily migrant community of Auburn.

Two car trips later, the school now has colored pens, markers, crayons, erasers, rulers, paper and a few other bits and pieces that were donated and this can all be passed onto families that cannot afford to furnish their young-uns with newly purchased 'stuff'. 

I am guilty of spending an inordinate amount of time in the "it's all about me" zone.....doing this has made me feel useful and that I have contributed to another community in a useful and helpful way.  I was also pleased that it gave us an opportunity to remind the KATs and their school mates of the needs of those less fortunate than themselves!

So, whilst this might not be what we think of when 'roadtrip' is mentioned, it's a roadtrip I was happy to take :)