in the post {blogmas day five}

One of my favourite parts of Christmas prep each year, is getting the children’s advent calendar made. I try and do something different every year, and it took me quite a while to work out what I wanted to do this year. The bags from last year wouldn’t work this year, with a change in the layout of the one single command-hook-friendly wall in our living room – glass overload to catch the view is a grand idea until it comes time to decorate for Christmas! I considered a postbox that I could post an envelope into, and as I mulled over that idea, eventually I settled on a post office + village scene, using an old science kit box as a base.

We’ve been getting Mel Science kits on and off for a couple of years; we tend to do a heap at once, then they back up so I pause, then we run out so I start again. In the time we’ve been getting them, I’ve found the boxes are the handiest dandiest size, just over A5, making them perfect for crafty type storage. There’s two in my paper craft box, one for dies and one for paper scraps. There’s one under my desk holding all the goodies collected on our road trip. There’s a stash in the container in case I decide I need more. I even used one to post a book back to a friend.

I managed to find a spare, and it’s the perfect size for the posting part of our 2024 Advent calendar

Each day, I write up a little card, and post it to the village for the kiddos to find. The central post office is inspired by a mishmash of old school country post offices I’ve noticed in our travels, flanked by a tall and skinny block of flats on one side, and an office with a christmas tree on the other.

In the end it was all very simple to bring together- a sheet of craft card, a posca pen, and a tape runner – to turn a science kit box into a post office. I made some envelopes out of more Kraft paper, and tape them up with washi after adding each day’s activities.

Yesterday, they received a parcel collection card, to bring to the post master (aka me); from there I went diving in my bag of Kmart goodies and pulled out four kits of christmas themed melty-beads (I’m sure they have a proper name; the plastic pits you put on pegs and then iron to fuse them together) that I picked up from Kmart a couple of weeks back. Today they’ll write a christmas story, and tomorrow is one that makes a feature every year – shop for and donate to a local charity drive. This year, we will be donating to a collection for kiddos in foster care, aged between 9 and 16, so the same age as these ratbags of mine. We’ve been lucky, and our kids have been lucky, and it’s important to us that we instil in them a spirit of giving back. Previously we’ve donated to the toy drive or a grocery drive, but I think it’s also important for them to find the cause at least tangentially related.

Not everything is that deep though. We’ll go to the club for the raffles and visit Santa for photos and watch a movie on Friday nights. We’ll play our new Christmas game and work on our other advent – a christmas themed escape room with 24 puzzles. With two weeks to go until we hit the last Christmas before my big boy moves out, I’m working hard to hit every advent high note I can muster.