My Christmas WIshlist

At the top of my wishlist is time. Me time. Alone time. My time is pretty limited these days and with a new baby coming in March, me time will be non-existent for awhile. Other desirable tangibles include the following 9 items. All links are for lovely small businesses. Please support small businesses every chance you get. 

1. Custom watercolor portrait by Danny Brito

2. Avalon by Homer Laughlin (China) I bought a decent set from a flea market 10 years ago, and I would love to add on to it. Available pieces are hard to come by. 

3. Calligraphy Class with MayBelle

4. A weekday of childcare so I can go enjoy the Makeshift Society work space. I'm already a member.

5. Gift certificate to Heath Ceramics, the greatest tile and homewares place. Located in Sausalito. 

6. Gift certificate to Mountain Bookshop, a lovely book store in Sonora, CA.

7. Gift certificate to Flora Grubb, a wildly unique nursery in San Francisco. 

8. The New York Times 36 Hours: 150 Weekends in the USA and Canada book.

9. Home by Novogratz book

 

Our son's Christmas Wishlist

Ok, well, he doesn't know this is his wish list, but I'm sure he'd love anything from this list. If you ask him, he'd say Legos, trains, a playhouse (dollhouse), and a small umbrella. I thought I'd expand on his interests for the inquiring grandparents. 

1. Eat like an Engineer: wooden railway-breadboard with dining car and tunnel cup with wooden coaster.

2. Modern Playouse: Uncle Alan is going to have a go at making a playhouse similar to this. 

3. Membership to Children's Discovery Museum

4. The Commute poster by the bird machine

5. Magnetic Art Board

6. The Black Dog book by Levi Pinfold

7. The Draw and Cook: 107 Recipes Illustrated by Artists from Around the World book by Nate Padavick

8. Flip-O-Storic book by Sara Ball

9. A Home for Bird book by Philip Stead

10. Legos

Our Advent Calendar

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed a few photos from our advent calendar. We haven't done advent calendars in the past because I've been turned off by the idea of giving chocolate/candy or crappy little trinkets every day for a month. Then last month I saw a great idea from Jordan: advent calendar activities! I thought this sounded like great fun and also an awesome way to make sure we can check off everything from our Christmas bucket-list!!

Most days I've planned for activities, but there are some days where my son gets a new little toy: I think there are 5 Schleich toys, 1 small Christmas Lego set, and a small bag of miscellaneous Christmas stamps. The rest of the days are filled with awesome activities. We have done several so far (links with photos). Here's the run-down of what we're up to this month:

Visit with Santa (for photos)
Make our own marshmallows and have them with hot chocolate
Write, stamp, and mail Holiday cards
Go ice skating
Make cookies for Santa
Make pinecone garland 
and other art projects, suitable for giving to Grandparents
Wrap presents 
Make gingerbread house
Visit library to pick out Christmas books

I'm a big stamp collector, and by collector, I actually mean user- I love to USE vintage stamps! I had almost every denomination from 1-25! I ordered a few missing stamps and got to work! I pulled out a few other things I had around the house: envelopes, yarn, paint chip samples, and my typewriter. A neighbor gave us the giant bulletin board and my son picked out the frog tacks from the craft store. Here are some photos! Have you done a non-traditional advent calendar?

 

 

Getting our tree

The advent calendar on Saturday said it was time to get our tree! So we headed out to Patchen Farm in the Los Gatos Mountains. It was a lovely day and we all had fun going up and down the hillside in search of the right tree. 

After trimming the tree, we went to a birthday party! What a great weekend!