Merry Christmas!
Thanks for joining us for our Advent Shadowbox 2012 Calendar!
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Here’s a recap!
Advent Shadowbox 2012: An Introduction: We (re)introduce our Advent Shadowbox Calendar Tradition and include some tips for how you might create a similar tradition of your own.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 1, Have a Tree Trimming Party, Make Cinnamon Glitter Ornaments and Favourite Photo Ornaments: We decorate our tree with our famous Favourite Photo Ornaments (an annual tradition) and we make new, fragrant Cinnamon Glitter Ornaments to add to the tree. DIY. Instructions Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 2, Read & Illustrate The Winter’s Tale, Acts I-II: We introduce the kids to The Winter’s Tale by reading them a synopsis of the first two acts and then reading those acts aloud as a family. Then, we present them with notebooks and have them illustrate their favourite moments, quotations, and characters from those acts. This begins a 4-5 week, Sundays-in-Advent project.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 3, Support the World Wildlife Fund: The kids help make online donations to the WWF to help their favourite wild animals continue to survive in the wild.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 4, Draw Blue-Prints of the House for Santa: The kids have fun looking at the official city survey of our home and draw imaginative blue-prints of our home to include in their letters to Santa.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 5, Write & Perform Harry Potter Themed Christmas Carols & Make Butter Beer Blondies: Not only do the 12 Days of Christmas take on new meaning as “The 12 Days of Hogwarts,” we’ve come up with one of our best ever recipes to celebrate the occasion: Butter-Beer Blondies! Song Lyrics & Recipe Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 6, Create Your Own Christmas-Themed “Clue”-Style Board Game: Best day so far!! We make a Christmas-Themed Mystery Board Game based on one of our favourite board games. And then we spend hours playing with it! DIY & Instructions Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 7, Begin our Friday Holiday Film Fest with an Unusual Double Feature & Make Kringle Corn: We start off our Friday Film Fest with a Double Feature of some wacky holiday movies: Gremlins & Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Crazy! And to go with the films, we make a snack mix now lovingly known as “Kringle Corn.” Recipe Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 8, Holiday Canning & Test-Cookie Party, Kid-Friendly Thumbprint Cookies, Carrot Cake Jam & Cranberry Sauce: A banner baking and canning day! We make several batches of our famous Carrot Cake Jam, Whisky Fig Cranberry Sauce, and Thumbprint Cookies to fill with our fabulous concoctions! Recipes & DIY Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 9, Read & Illustrate The Winter’s Tale, Acts II-III: We continue reading The Winter’s Tale, illustrating our favourite scenes, including those famous stage directions, “Exit, Pursued by a Bear!”
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 10, Give a Beehive: Via PlanCanada, we donate a beehive and lessons on how to use it, to a family abroad.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 11, Make a Christmas Collage Post-Card, Write a Memory Poem on the Back, & Send it to a Friend: The kids get to work creating collages out of vintage christmas media, write short poems on the backs and mail them out. DIY. Instructions Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 12, Improvise a One-Act, Christmas-Themed Hunger Games Play: The kids love to improvise and play-act, so we decided to challenge them to come up with a Christmas-themed number and to perform it before bed.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 13, Learn “Who” to Knit, Begin a Family/Welcome-Guest Scarf Project: The kids learn a basic knit & purl, and we begin a long, long, long, long, long, Dr. Who-Style scarf project to leave around the house for guests to add to when they visit.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 14, Watch Holiday (1938) and Make Prof. Potter’s “Hidden Whallop” Punch & Judy Cookies: The Fridays-in-Advent Film Festival Continues as we introduce the kids to one of our favourite movies. We watch Grant & Hepburn in George Cukor’s Holiday (1938). We came up with a very special cookie just for the occasion! Toblerone-stuffed sugar “Punch & Judy” Cookies. Recipe Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 15, Gingerbread Party, Design, Build, Decorate: The kids spend a bit of time designing an ideal gingerbread house before we have a gingerbread house decorating party with friends.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 16, Read & Illustrate The Winter’s Tale, Act IV: We continue our project of illustrating Shakespeare’s play in our special notebooks.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 17, Fill a Pantry: We give to the Daily Bread Food Bank.
How to Make Silhouettes from Digital Photos Using Free Online Photo-Editing Tools & a Printer/Scanner: A step-by-step guide to making classic silhouettes from photos you can take on your own digital camera or phone using free online tools like fotoflexer.com and a printer/scanner. DIY. Instructions Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 18, Make Silhouette Self-Portrait Cards & Send Them to Family & Friends: We have a fantastic time making silhouettes from photos of the kids, colouring them in with images and phrases that most-represent the kids, and scanning them, and sending them to family and friends. DIY. Instructions Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 19, Pre-Christmas-Concert Pizza Party with Quick & Easy Individual Thin Crust Pizzas: For a busy night, we make our new favourite home-made pizzas. Recipe Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 20, Make a Deck of Constellation Cards: We make a deck of cards with patterns of the constellations punched out so that you can hold them up to the light and see the constellation shine through or create shadows-and-light shows of the constellations against a table, book, or wall. DIY. Printable Constellation Patterns Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 21, Order Fish & Chips and Watch The Bishop’s Wife: We watch a holiday movie we’ve never seen before and indulge in home delivered fish & chips.
Cannoli Buche de Noel: Our new twist on a classic. Chocolate (or Vanilla) Cake with Rum Syrup, Cannoli Filling, and (Chocolate) Mascarpone Icing. Recipes Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 22, P.M. Pajama Party – Make Cookies for Santa: We make our famous Cookie Meteors & Santa Baby Cookies. Recipes Included.
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Day 23: Read & Illustrate The Winter’s Tale, Act V: We finish our play and provide illustrations for the final Act as well as “book cover” illustrations!
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Christmas Eve Checklist: Our TBD’s before Santa arrives!!
Advent Shadowbox 2012: Merry Christmas
Perform & Record The Winter’s Tale (with bears and stuffies): The kids play out the basic story of our Shakespeare play using their favourite animals.
Lord Peter Wimsey’s Case Crackin’ New Years Eve Party: A menu and a movie list for another mystery-themed New Year’s Eve fete!
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