Christmas Crappy - I Mean Crafty

If you happen to have a little sister named Tracy (which I do) and she happens to call you one day to tell you to fire up the old TV to see a Christmas craft they were doing on one of those cheesy Utah crafty shows (which she did!) you should probably just say "cute!" and then hang up right on her face (which, unfortunately, I didn't). Because once you start this craft, you'll be yelling expletives that you didn't even know you knew! Super fun! Don't worry, though. I'll spoil it right now for you - SPOILER ALERT! and all that - it ends up pretty cute. Plus it's just more added to my arsenal of why the children WILL adore me until the end of time. See what I did for you?!? You can never have enough See What I Did For Yous!

We jumped into this advent calendar thing, because I love advent calendars. Advent calendars and nativity scenes. Those, Linus, are what Christmas is all about. It was after jumping, however, that we realized the scope of this calendar. Each one takes 25 tins, as I'm sure you figured. But, times that by 5 naughty elves and that makes 125 TINS! Where on earth can you find 125 tins without cracking into the college fund piggy bank? I'll tell you! Some on Ebay, some at Michaels, some at JoAnns, some at Oriental Trading, and some that don't work at Hobby Lobby, so I'd avoid those if I were you. But then, on top of the 125 tins there are numbers, and under the 125 tins there are letters. That makes 250 punches to punch! Insert Howard Dean charging yell of excitement right here!

The Jebcarpenter made the frames himself. And then since it was cold outside we decided to paint them down in the most unventilated part of our house, which would be the unfinished part of the basement just down from the heater. Guess what happened? No, we did not blow up the house. But thanks for thinking I'd be blogging after our house blew up! No, the heater kicked on and pulled all the paint fumes from the basement and blew them all over the house. Anyone wanting a quick pick me up can come and take some deep breaths in our house for 30 seconds and you'll be feeling goooooooood. Or you might have a killer headache like mine. Either way.

The next exciting part of this project is the magnets on the backs of the tins. Considering the mass quantities of individual magnets required we opted for the cheapo solution of the rolled up magnet tape. That, I'd say, was the biggest mistake I have made in my entire life. ENTIRE LIFE! Those babies would plunge themselves to a death by tile all night long. It sounded like little Christmas kamikazes exploding as they plummeted themselves to the floor in the middle of the night. Like Christmas fireworks! Another Howard Dean yell!

Anyway, here is the finished product. And the link for the details wherein she paints a much happier picture of the process, cause I know after my description you're totally heading there to do these for all your neighbor gifts, right?