Catching up!

Well, SURPRISE I'm back! Shout out to Mandi who has memorized the garland blog by now. I've missed it but just haven't had the energy to put anything together.

I'm not sure how good this will be but I'm going to give it a try. I have a month or more worth of blog information and my head is swimming with ideas so if I ramble please be patient.

I think I'll start with before Christmas and then bring things up to date....so this is a crazy idea I've done for my grand kids for the last couple of years. Similar to or as an advent calendar. I wrap a small gift for each child for each day before Christmas. Like a count down. Each gift has a number attached to match with the day they will be opening that gift. And YES, that is 25 gifts for each child (4) = 100 gifts...it was a lot easier than it sounds and fun too~

I lucked out last year and got most of this years gifts at clearance (75% off or more). This is the exact time you need to be out looking if you want to do one for next year. There were all types of gifts....pens, cups with candy, toys, hot cocoa mix, books, gum and about anything else you run across or can think of.

I made this contraption the year before out of wire coat hangers wrapped with ribbon. They made it through this year but I'm not certain they will hold up for next year.

It looks like a tangled mess doesn't it?? Some of the gifts were really too big and heavy for this....I kind of over did it...

Hear are the lovely little darlings with things from the 9th day...I believe these were magnets...the kind you can stick on your car, refrigerator or file cabinet. They don't looked too thrilled, maybe they were acting silly. It was sweet of their parents to seen me this photo.