collage advent tree

Clover has that 3 year old sense of time, where her whole life up to this point is "yesterday" and everything that is coming up is happening tomorrow. After several questions about whether she could go to bed so Christmas could come over, and if Christmas is here yet...yet....yet,  I decided that a visual representation of the passage of time was in order. 

I wanted to use things we had here, so we came up with this tree. It's a collage of green paper, peppered with gold reward stars from a preschool book, and dotted with ornaments  made of tinfoil. Clover wants to glue paper circles onto the spaces for each day.

I stuck a piece of cardboard from a box of diapers on the back, added some foil, stabbed holes in it with a knitting needle, and strung it up with floral wire.

The first three minutes of this project with my little ladies was really fun. After that it became more of an endurance test for how long any of us could go without either screaming, crying, or throwing something. Thankfully most of my sarcastic comments went right over Violet's head....When I congratulated her on her huge mess from throwing everything on the floor, or thanked her for doing something naughty, she just replied with a "thank you".

Poor Clover has been suffering through a post-holiday cold. She's got a red snot irritation mustache and a scratchy teenage boy voice. Hopefully the illness vacates soon. It hasn't slowed her down much, but we're all getting testy. Her not feeling well, the endless torrent of snot and coughing, Violet's broken leg, holiday fatigue, and not enough sleep for all of us makes for a volatile household. Yikes. 

How do you like that background blur? Tim got me a very early birthday gift over the cyber sale weekend (actually I ordered it myself, but I'm the only one who knew what I wanted). My birthday is on Jan 1st, but I was looking to snag a deal on a camera lens during all the sales. Now I can use my new Pentax 50mm/1.8 prime lens to take nice pictures over the holiday!