It’s 38 days before Christmas and everything is a-whirl — well, not so much here in Vietnam. But in our household, we try as much as we can to make this season special for Sam. I grew up in a home with lots of Christmas traditions and I hope to pass some of those to my son but living far away from the rest of my family makes it difficult. Hence, we need to come up with our own traditions.
I remember we’d spend Christmas Eve with my maternal grandparents while Mom and Dad would play Santa and make sure that the gifts were well in place in our Christmas socks at home. We’d play games with our cousins all night long before the clock strikes midnight. Then, we’d hug, kiss, and drink champagne/wine (when I was old enough) to celebrate Jesus’ birth. My yaya (nanny) would serve hot chocolate and we’d feast on my grandma’s Noche Buena. When we get home after the celebration, we’d be happily going through the pile of gifts Santa has brought us and sleep till the wee hours reveling in our gifts! I had the best childhood ever!
Since Sam won’t be surrounded by a lot of relatives, he will be surrounded by a lot of friends. And luckily this year, my mom, sister, brother, and grandma will be visiting us for the holidays! So it’s gonna be one terrific Christmas!
Inspired by fellow N@wie, Ricci, I decided to start creating an Advent Calendar too for Sam where he’d get one gift a day till Christmas. Nothing expensive. Just his usual goodies which he can share to his friends.
This is the base calendar without the loot bags:
Starting to put on the loot bags… actually I’m still missing 5. I ran out of ideas what to give Sam.
The finished product should look like this:
Some of the items are too big for the bags so I just placed a piece of paper describing what the gift is.
Now, if I can only think of 5 more things to put in!
Wow Ly! Good job! Did you make everything yourself from scratch? Galing! Us naman, we’re doing a modified version of the Jesse Tree (the link I posted on Rainy Days). I still have to finish making it!
LOL Ree. I didn’t do it from scratch except for the name na ako lang nagpattern. Haha. The rest, yung mga Xmas designs are all store bought. There’s a shop here that sells parang scrapbook stuff so I used those na lang. Mostly pasting lang ginawa ko. Hehe! Tapos the small bags are readily available. I’ve seen those in Divi rin eh.
Yung sa Jesse Tree, I can use our Xmas tree rin di ba? Pero that’s really better to para maintindihan nang kids ang Xmas story. Pwede ring ma-project yan. May oras pa. Pwede rin print na lang ako nang images dun sa isang site tapos will make a mini Jesse tree. Thanks Ree for that! Pag tapos mo na, pwede patingin? Pwede mangopya. I’m not feeling so creative these days. Haha!