Tag Archives: Nablopomo

a handmade advent calendar

I have fond memories of using an advent calendar each year when I was a kid. Each day from December 1 through Christmas, my sisters and I would take turns opening up a little window (really just a thin cardboard flap) on one of our advent calendars, which we would display each year as part of our Christmas celebrations and decorations. Behind each flap was a scripture verse from the Christmas story, I think.

I hadn’t used an advent calendar since then, but this year I decided to get creative and make my own. For the record, although I made it completely by myself, my advent calendar idea is NOT original. I give all the credit for the inspiration to OhHelloMagpie, who sells this Farmhouse Garland Advent Calendar Kit on etsy.

I had been wanting to be able to make my own gift tags for a while, so I finally bit the bullet and bought a gift tag punch at Michael’s for 40% off. Without that tool, this project would not be nearly as cute, because I know for a fact that I never would have cut out 25 tags like this by hand.

So yesterday I printed out the numbers onto kraft paper (it’s that brown paper that looks like a grocery bag), using a table in Microsoft Word to create my template. I then punched out the numbers with my gift tag punch, which is the moment when I got all excited about my little project, especially because it looked so much like the inspiration photo.

I already had 24 mini clothespins on hand from a project I did several years ago, but had to buy another pack today because I needed one more! I cut a length of red ribbon and gathered up my 25 mini clothespins, and we were ready for business.

Honestly, the hardest part of this project was deciding where to hang the advent calendar. I had the worst time trying to figure out the best place to display it, but I finally settled on the dining area. I used packing tape (eek! ghetto!) to attach the ends of the red ribbon to the edge of the counter, and then clipped the tags to the ribbon with the clothespins.

Did you notice that my clothespins are different from the ones in the inspiration photo? Here, take a closer look at mine.

My clothespins are actually much wider than the ones OhHelloMagpie used, which means they’re also much heavier. And my paper cards are also a bit smaller, which means my advent calendar is very top-heavy. It threatened to flip itself upside down, but I used some extra tape (after I took some photos!) to make it more secure. Also, it’s in a pretty high-traffic area, so the extra tape reduces the likelihood that the whole thing will get accidentally yanked out of place.

The advent calendar is really close to the dining table, so I barely had any room to get a picture of the whole thing. Maybe I’ll move the table tomorrow to get a better shot, but for now, here it is.

Right after I proudly hung my finished project, Magen came over, took one look at it, and said, “That’s not much of a calendar.” She didn’t mean to insult my work, of course, so I took a deep breath and gently explained that not all calendars have days on a grid that starts with Sunday and goes through Saturday!

On the back of each day’s card, I’ll write a special Christmas activity that the kids are supposed to do that day. I’m not going to write them all in advance, of course, because I know they would want to peek — and because I haven’t thought of them all yet. I’ll write each one at night after the kids are in bed so that they can discover each day’s surprise as soon as they get up.

OK, December. We’re ready for you.

P.S. Here are the activities we’ve been doing so far. There are some days when the kids aren’t here at all, so not all activities are for children.

Day 1: eat red and green Christmas pancakes
Day 2: shop for Christmas gifts
Day 3: make a gingerbread house
Day 4: go to the Christmas parade AND pick out a Christmas tree
Day 5: watch “Olive, the Other Reindeer”
Day 6: drive around and look at all the pretty Christmas lights
Day 7: cut paper snowflakes
Day 8: guess the number of Hershey’s Kisses in a jar
Day 9: order our Christmas photo card (finally!)
Day 10: make Christmas gift tags
Day 11: attend a Christmas concert
Day 12: make hot chocolate mix (sorry, not awesome enough to share the recipe)
Day 13: assemble health kits for people in need
Day 14: wrap packages
Day 15: Christmas activity sheets
Day 16: learn the story behind a Christmas song
Day 17: watch “Polar Express”
Day 18: celebrate Christmas at Nana’s
Day 19: give gifts to Sunday School teachers
Day 20: play Pin the Nose on Rudolph
Day 21: eat a red and green dinner
Day 22: listen to our favorite Christmas songs
Day 23: drink a glass of eggnog
Day 24: attend a Christmas Eve candlelight service
Day 25: read the Christmas story from the Bible

fist stick knife gun

I first heard of Geoffrey Canada as I was driving home to Virginia on a dark Sunday night earlier this year after visiting my then-fiance in Pennsylvania. I was listening to an old episode of This American Life from 1997 called “Guns.” The episode included a 10-minute segment in which a man named Geoffrey Canada talked about his experience growing up in the Bronx and read from his book “Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America.”

Right away, I knew I wanted to read the book, so when I got home, I opened up a little text document I keep on my computer called “Books I Want to Read” and typed in the title.

A month or so later, while driving across Pennsylvania on I-78 eastbound, I was listening to a much more recent episode of This American Life called “Going Big.” The entire first half of the show featured the work of the Harlem Children’s Zone and its president/CEO, Geoffrey Canada.

I soon logged on to Amazon.com and bought his book, but during the craziness of planning a wedding, quitting my job, and moving to Pennsylvania, I let the book sit on the shelf collecting dust for a number of months. I finally picked it up and started reading it back in September, but then became distracted by other fluffier books and temporarily set it aside. When I finished reading it last night, I found myself wishing that it were longer than 179 pages.

Canada spends the first nine chapters describing the codes of conduct that he lived by as a boy in the 1950s and 60s. He writes:

“When I was growing up in the South Bronx there were some natural checks on violent behavior. Most violence on the block was done with the fists in what we called a “fair one”: two people fought until one was too hurt to continue or quit in defeat. There were people around to ensure the dispute was settled according to the rules. No “dirty” fighting was allowed, no kicking or biting, no weapons. If someone violated the rules he might be attacked or ostracized by the group.”

But as times changed and guns became more prevalent, the rules of the streets and sidewalks of the South Bronx changed too.

Canada returned to New York City in 1983 after receiving a masters degree in education from Harvard, ready to make a difference in the lives of poor children in Harlem, along with their families and their neighborhood. “Fist Stick Knife Gun” is full of stories and insights surrounding situations of violence and potential violence, some of which ended quite positively due to the wise decision-making and peace-keeping efforts of Geoffrey Canada.

While violence isn’t something I’ve either studied or experienced in any significant way, the author brings an insider’s perspective that I found incredibly fascinating and valuable. The book is one that makes me wish I were much more gifted at writing a book review, because it’s a book I would highly recommend.

The Know-It-All (and other books I’ve recently read)

Last September, I started reading a book called “The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World.” I stumbled across it at the Green Valley Book Fair and thought it seemed interesting, so I bought it for four bucks and started reading it… until I soon set it aside, unfinished. A few weeks ago, I picked it back up again, but since I couldn’t remember what I had read the first time, I had to start all over at the beginning.

This evening, I finally finished it. To give you an idea of just how long it took me to get through it, I started reading it before Tim and I ever went on our first date — and we’ve been married almost four months. Of course, I read more than a dozen other books during that time, so it’s not that I gave up reading when I met Tim.

The cover of “The Know-It-All” claims that it’s a National Bestseller, and it’s written by A.J. Jacobs, who wrote the recently popular book “The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible,” but honestly, I struggled to get through it. It’s basically one man’s story of the year he spent reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, and like the Britannica, the book is organized alphabetically by topic. (You can read an excerpt on the author’s website.) The book is full of interesting information, and he managed to weave in plenty of humor and personal stories, but nothing really compelled me to read further. I could have stopped at any point and not felt that I was going to miss anything — except the satisfaction of finishing what I started.

Perhaps the most interesting fact I gleaned is that the scoring system for the game of Boggle is actually the Fibonacci sequence. The Fibo-what, you ask? The Fibonacci sequence is a sequence of numbers that I learned about as a kid when I watched an episode of Mathnet on the PBS show Square One. It later came up in a high school math class. Each of the numbers is the sum of the two preceding numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. The Fibonacci numbers appear in both math and nature (check out the Wikipedia entry for details), but I love knowing that the Fibonacci sequence also shows up in Boggle.

So… while The Know-It-All was an interesting book, it isn’t necessarily one that I would recommend — although if you DO want to read it, I’d be happy to give you my copy.

Last month I set a goal of reading 1000 books during the remainder of my lifetime. I have no idea if that will really happen, but I’ve read four books so far. Two of those were “Sleepwalk with Me” by comedian Mike Birbiglia and “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” by Julia Alvarez. I actually read an autographed copy of Mike Birbiglia’s book, since Tim and I each got one for “free” when we went to a performance by him back in October. (Are you reading this via a Google Alert, Mike? I hope so.)

So that’s the scoop. I haven’t decided yet what I’ll read next, but I have a stack of unread books that is probably as high as the stack of Britannica volumes would be, so I should probably pick one of those…

the happy sleeping bag bag

EXHIBIT A: My cozy Coleman sleeping bag that I bought from a friend for two bucks a few years ago when I stopped by her yard sale late one Saturday morning. Last Sunday evening, when Tim and I were unloading the truck after our trip to Penn State, my sleeping bag that I had so neatly rolled up that morning suddenly fell into disarray, so I decided to make sure that wouldn’t happen again.

EXHIBIT B: My new sleeping bag bag that I sewed up this weekend. All I had to buy were the cording and the cord stop, since I already had the fabric on hand and I’m trying really hard to use up my fabric stash. I also used this project as an excuse to try out one of the many stitches on my fancy new sewing machine — the reinforced straight stitch, which is good for topstitching and reinforcing seams.

EXHIBIT C: My old sleeping bag in its new habitat. Doesn’t it look happy? Well, at least the person who made it is.