Furniture switcharoo and stuffing the Advent

So. How’s it going?! First off, a huge thanks for all the well-wishes. I’ll keep you posted. 🙂

Okay, so I showed you how I moved the sofa table over to the staircase wall…

In it’s previous life it was a headboard. I cut it down, gave it a coat of paint, and turned it into a retro sofa table:

I’m still totally diggin’ the table. Like, A Lot. I like it a lot. You couldn’t really see it very well behind the couch though, so I moved it where my kids art desk use to be:

Which is just fine by me because their desk usually looks like a complete disaster. Don’t believe me?

Um, ya. I just couldn’t take it any longer. So I banished them from the living room and they now have to do projects at the kitchen table, which has actually stayed a lot cleaner…

So now my living room is looking more like this:

…which brings me to the point of the post.

I’m loving my Silhouette Advent Calendar. It has been so much fun!

The only problem is, what the heck do I put in those 25 drawers?? I mean, some are big. Some are small. Some are tall. I hit up Target and Dollar Tree and left empty handed. I was at a total loss.

Until it dawned on me. Why had I never thought of the Mother-Load of all things party-favor?!

That’s right. Party City! (This is NOT a promotional post.) They seriously pulled through for me in a big way.

I shopped around until I had two sets of 25 items (I have two kids – hence the two sets). When I got home I just dumped everything out on the floor and went to work.

I tried to sort most stuff before I began stuffing boxes, and I made sure to put the largest items in the boxes first so that I wouldn’t end up with a big fat toy and no big boxes left.

After some switching around and finagling I managed to get all the little prizes into the boxes.

The kids have LOVED this Advent Calendar. I pretty much threatened them with their life if I caught them peeking in the box before the appropriate day. If I caught them peeking (or their sibling did and told on them) they would have that days prize forfeited. They haven’t cheated once!

Here is just a sampling of the different items they’ve received. I started day 1 with bells. They each got a carabiner bell set to attach to their backpack and a mini-bells ring. I’m sure their teachers have loved me this month with all the jangling going on. 😉

Cards are always fun for my kids – especially when they are mini cards. Kinsey has already added this mini Uno set to her American Girl accessories collection.

Bouncy balls are always great. Until they break a lamp or something…

And who can resist Slinky from Toy Story? Not me!

We’re only half-way through the month, but the mini Mad-Libs have definitely been the hit this season. The kids have gone coo-coo for Mad-Libs! Now if I could only get them to use words other than “fart”.

We are a Peeps-lovin’ family around here, so of course they had to try the chocolate covered peeps trees.

What kid doesn’t love Clackers? They were always one of my favorite toys as a kid. Probably because they are annoying as hell.

I’m excited for them to get these fun mini paint sets. I don’t know what it is about mini stuff, but I.just.love.it.so.much. Mini stuff is adorable!

The kids think the candy-filled ones are lame. Who would have thought? Next year I’ll put less candy and more little trinkets. But we can’t have Christmas Eve without candy canes to add to the tree, so I filled box 24 with mini ones.

I never thought coming up with 25 little treats for the Advent would be such a challenge, but it really took some thought. The kids have loved it so much and I’m sure to make this fun Advent Calendar a Family Tradition from now on.

Oh, and for those of you who complimented me on my CLEAN house in my last post about my Holiday Decor…

Thank You! But I’ll be honest. I clean for pictures. It’s true. Just the night before my family room looked like this:

Oh snap.

I drank a Diet Dr Pepper, put on some Christmas music, and cleaned the heck out the room so I could get it pretty for pictures. That’s one good thing about Blogging – my house gets cleaner faster because I HAVE to clean to take pics.

Have a super very merry Christmas!

One more thing…

The kids are off school now. The boy-toy (hubbs) is off work too. So I’ll be taking some time off to be with the fam. It is Christmas after all. I’ve got posts pre-scheduled for next week, but I just want you to know that I’ll be ignoring my email even more than I already do (which is next to impossible since I’m horrible at following through with email, but you get the idea.)