![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/-4f22BuRsi-8\/Ttm14Ic5bOI\/AAAAAAAATBU\/PVNbnNy8Wew\/s800\/IMGP0423.JPG\" "\\"felt")
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the first year that mr. happy stuff and i were married, i sewed 24 of these little felt mini-stockings<\/a> and we each filled 12 for the other person to celebrate the 12 days of christmas.\u00c2\u00a0 we carried on the tradition for about 3 years before it fell by the wayside amidst the hustle and bustle of visiting family over the holidays.\u00c2\u00a0 this year, i got them out to do an advent calendar for the happy baby.\u00c2\u00a0 i thought a long time about what i wanted to put in the stockings.\u00c2\u00a0 not bad chocolate.\u00c2\u00a0 not plastic trinkets.\u00c2\u00a0 needed to be small enough to fit…. in the end, i decided on a mix of three different ideas.\u00c2\u00a0 the first idea is that i wanted a way to use the advent calendar to talk about the nativity story, so i looked for a 25-piece nativity scene small enough to fit in the stockings and kid-friendly enough that he could play with the pieces if he wanted to.\u00c2\u00a0 most of the ready-made ones were pretty pricey or pretty ugly or too much of a choking hazard.\u00c2\u00a0 i was attracted to the idea of felt finger puppets for each character, but thought that sounded like way too much work in a busy season.\u00c2\u00a0 then i found this free downloadable version<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 the artwork is super cute, but tp tubes are too big to fit in these stockings (and i don’t have 13 lying around).\u00c2\u00a0 so, i’ve been altering the art one piece at a time (sometimes just shrinking it, sometimes also drawing the “back” side so that they look like this:<\/p>\n the original artist would not give me permission to publish the art in the altered form, but if you’re interested, leave a comment and maybe i can e-mail you a copy when i’m all done?\u00c2\u00a0 so… each day we open a stocking and it has a new piece to add to the nativity scene and sometimes a bible verse to go along with the characters we’re adding that day.\u00c2\u00a0 on some days, there’s also a slip of paper with an activity (inspired by Elsie marley’s list<\/a>) or a note to “read a christmas book” inspired by the popular blog idea i first read about here<\/a>, but have now seen all over the place.\u00c2\u00a0 i’ll write more tomorrow about my own spin on the christmas book tradition.\u00c2\u00a0 i gotta go change someone’s stinky pants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" the first year that mr. happy stuff and i were married, i sewed 24 of these little felt mini-stockings and we each filled 12 for the other person to celebrate the 12 days of christmas.\u00c2\u00a0 we carried on the tradition … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/-oFHVMlgVtyM\/TuFlfFuIDhI\/AAAAAAAATCY\/TKCga3SejqI\/s800\/IMGP0516.JPG\" "\\"nativity\\"")
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