With a nod to loobylu’s recent post on matchboxes and Advent, I present to you the Heels household parental joint effort of this evening:

The matchboxes are covered with images that I cut out from Anthropologie and Land of Nod catalogues from this season, as well as a cover from a recent Land’s End or LL Bean. (I forget which one.)

I printed out the round stickers and as I glue-sticked the covers on the matchboxes, the Husband stuck the numbers in place on each box. We then went back and filled each box with a piece of chocolate:

Note also the shrinky ornaments that McPantses and I made over the weekend. It’s always more fun when you let the kid cut things out, right? Note the glare from the lights and the flash, too. I’m quite new to capturing life via a camera. Work with me, people, and forgive the ineptitude.

While making the shrinky ornaments, I made a 2005 tag and tonight I attached it to a big green glass pitcher that we put all the matchboxes in, after we wrapped each chocolate with a cutout slip of paper listing the big activity for the particular day.

I’ll list our 24 days of activities tomorrow. In a minute, I have a date with a Medela PIS.*

Think McPantses will love this much?

* Can you hear me sighing all the way from here?

Edited to add our list, which was really hard to make because we have to allow for harried, hurried nights after working all day and three or four Christmas parties, two of which are mandatory and on nights after work (I hate going out sans kids after work–it’s too much for the kids and for me):

1. Put up Christmas flag.

2. Stamp, sign and mail church postcards. (The Mothers in Prayer group sends cards to all the children in the church for Christmas and Easter. Each member takes an age group. McP loves anything mail related, so this will be fun for her. For me, it’s a task that must be done.)

3. Get wreath (from local curb market–it’s a neat tradition and you have to get there at the asscrack of dawn to get decent greenery in December).

4. Color picture for Christmas card. (McP is doing the artwork for our card–she draws a mean version of the Heels family, complete with me holding Charlie Crabcake and herself taller than anyone else.)

5. Make house smell like Christmas. (Where you toss cinnamon sticks, cloves, anise seeds, etc., in an old saucepan and warm the crap up every once in a while.)

6. Polish toenails in Christmas colors. (I am thinking light metallic green with tiny red dots.)

7. Hang candy canes on tree.

8. Call the inlaws and sing a Christmas carol.

9. Give present to fave daycare teacher while she babysits this night.

10. Hang paper snowflakes from ceiling. (Some gorgeous crafty blog has a pic of this.)

11. Make peanut butter pinecones to feed birds.

12. Wrap school present. (McPantses’ class draws names.)

13. Call my parents and sing a Christmas carol.

14. Drink hot chocolate and stir with candy canes.

15. Paint face like Rudolph. (The Husband and I will be at a Christmas party, so we figured fave daycare teacher/babysitter could handle this one well.)

16. Color Christmas pictures.

17. Eat reindeer food. (We are driving to TN this day and coming home on the 18th, so we had to go simple simple simple. I think reindeer food will be a ziploc with popcorn and m&ms and peanuts.)

18. Watch Christmas movies.

19. Make a paper chain.

20. Wrap present for favorite friend.

21. Look at all our Christmas cards!

22. Make salt dough ornaments. (I like to do baby handprints and footprints and use them as gift tags. These are very popular with grandparents.)

23. Drive around and look at lights.

24. Read the Christmas story and leave out milk and cookies for Santa.

If I have time and motivation, I will try to link stuff where appropriate. I tried to make things simple and brief and I wanted to be sure that McPantses would enjoy everything we did. I didn’t do a lot of tree decoration or baking because I’m not sure when that’ll get done and I wanted to keep obligatory stuff separate, if that makes any sense at all.

I can’t wait to see what McP thinks of all this. It’s the first year we’ve done a daily activity.