A Busy December

I don't mean to not be here.  I'm just in a weird place right now, at times incredibly busy, but also succumbing to complete inertia at other times. There was a funeral to plan and attend and now I have started the task of moving and sorting through what is left of my grandmother's possessions. Sometimes when I am procrastinating doing something in the house I will head out to the garage and spend hours with the boxes. Already I've sent 12 huge boxes of housewares to Goodwill.  I'm starting to think that I want to stay away from thrifting for awhile.

In the meantime, it's the Christmas season, which brings about a busyness of its own.  I made our advent calendar the night before I flew up north for my grandmother's funeral; I needed to know that it would be ready to go the day after I got home.  I was inspired by a couple of very simple envelope advent calendars that I saw online, but had to make it my own:

I used kraft coin envelopes, which I already had.  We purchased some rubber stamps and scrapbooking embellishments and I went to work decorating the envelopes with numbers, stamped images, and the embellishments.  I hung the envelopes on baker's twice using miniature clothes pins and then painted a slightly larger craft clothes pin bright red to mark the day.  I had originally thought we'd take each envelope off the garland when it was opened, but it really messed with the weight distribution so I came up with the idea for the red clothes pin.  The envelopes aren't sealed shut which means we can reuse them next year.  I don't put candy in our advent envelopes, just a slip of paper with an activity or craft on it.

(Since I took these pictures we've decorated the mantle with garlands, candles, and cut crystal and we've hung our stockings behind the garland.  It looks pretty plain in the picture.)

Here is a close up of a few envelopes:

And one with the red clothes pin:

So far we've watched Christmas specials and movies, done some crafts, decorated the house, gone to Disneyland, eaten at a favorite restaurant, and more.

I keep saying that life will get back to normal once we get past the holidays ~ maybe I should just accept this as normal for now.