My kids always look forward to advent calendars as Christmas draws near. I usually buy the pre made calendars from the store with a holiday scene pictured on the front and little windows that open to reveal a small chocolate.
On December 1st, I surprised my family with a homemade advent calendar! I started with plain brown paper lunch sacks I picked up from the dollar store and some pretty red scrapbook paper I had on hand. I used a free printable I found online (here:
advent printable) for the numbers and used double sided tape to put them all together.
Once all the bags were decorated, I added a treat\activity to each one.
Some examples of the treats:
Peppermint Bark
Mini Candy Canes
Chocolate Snowmen
York peppermint Patties
Mini Candybars
Gum
Chocolate Coins
Activities:
Hot Chocolate Bar
No Bake Oatmeal Cookies
Movie Night w/ a Bag of Popcorn
Rice Crispy Treats
Decorate Cookies for Santa (on Christmas Eve)
I folded down the tops of the bags, punched two holes in each one, and tied them closed with ribbon. They turned out darling, my kids are loving them and I had fun making them. I'd like to make another calendar next year, I think it should become a tradition in our home each year.
My cousins Sharon & Dave put on the best Christmas party! Great food and fantastic company. We had family in from out of town so it was extra special since we don't see them often.
We played a game that had me laughing so hard I was crying. A blindfolded person is "it" and walks around to people in the room and says, "oink piggy, oink". The person then makes an oinking sound and the blindfolded person tries to guess who is making the sound. It was hilarious! 
We also did a White Elephant gift exchange. There were a good mix of nice and gag gifts. The "rainbeer" was a hit and the gourmet hot cocoa mix with a bottle of Bayleys got traded the max amount of times. Dave kept trying to pawn off a set of wooden pineapple bowls and poor Jackson ended up with a giant calculator...which was actually really funny! 
