Christmas is coming...

...in less than a month! I started my Christmas sewing on Saturday, turning some gold-colored brocade from my fabric stash into a tree skirt. In former lifetimes it has been both pillow shams and a valance above our shower. A little Velco, a little gold braid (and a whole lot of calculating and then recalculating the diameter of the circle based on the amount of gold braid I had to go around the circumferance) and voilà! Things old are new again.

Next up: stockings for me and Jim. I made our original stockings back in 1996 and they're just so... 90s. You know, earth-tone red and green plaids with pine trees and hearts. I wanted something a little more expressive of our personalities, so over the last few months I bought some Simpsons Christmas fabric for Jim and sock monkey Christmas fabric for me.

Today I started planning our yearly advent calendar line-up, inspired by this post at Playful Learning. Our annual favorites will be back, including:

• putting up the tree on December 1st
• reading about the history and significance of Christmas symbols such as the wreath, the candle and the star
• making Christmas cookies
• hanging our stockings
• visiting the local animal shelter with donations for needy critters

This year I'll be adding some new activities:

• making Christmas cards for teachers
• reading about the history of the winter solstice
• decorating ice cream cone Christmas trees (instead of the usual gingerbread houses)
• creating ornaments for grandparents

and the one I'm really excited about (because Audrey suddenly has a wild hair that she wants to eat tamales after we learned about them for Día de los Muertos) ...

•  learning about how Las Posadas is celebrated in Mexico and making tamales

So many things to look forward to!