Liv Inspires

I have started two years ago a tradition (it seems) in our household to make each year a DIY advent calendar for my little one(s).

This year the book shop and publisher Artforum was giving away printed pictures of Vladimir Kral’s illustrations from the wonderful Slovak version of the Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder (in honour of it’s this year’s reprint) to cut out and use for your DIY Advent Calendar. So I just had to use those (since Vladimir Kral’s illustrations are just truly wonderful!).

Somehow I had set my mind on making paper houses this year. Of course, I did not realize what it meant to make 24 paper houses, before I started. Haha. I’m just crazy, really. I drafted, cut and glued them all myself. But it was fun! It meant 3 nights with little sleep, but still it was fun! :-)

But I have to admit, had I started to do them earlier, it might be without the sleep deprivation. Though, then again…. naaah, who am I kidding… I know myself, I just would do it the same way, even if I had more time. I just can’t stop, once I start doing something (like this).

Since it was not done in one night, Liv saw the making of her advent calendar. First, she said she didn’t want one. I said ok, I’ll do it for myself then. On the next day however, she already saw three finished houses. And she loved them right away.

Right away she wanted to add to the process of making them and said she will paint them. Though, my intention was to leave them white, I love that she wanted to do it with me, so I didn’t tell her anything. And she started to draw on them. And glue on them. And put surprises inside of them for me! How wonderful is that!

I do love the fact that it’s going to be something we both worked on! I know she will in time probably paint them all… And I’m so looking forward to it! Though I did not at all intend it that way, I think it’s so much better when she takes something I created for her and turns it into something else!

Call me crazy, but I also did a second advent calendar. Yes, I am cockoo.

(Work in progress)

Though I have two kids now, one doesn’t need an advent calendar yet. Still, I had those extra pictures… And I just wanted to try a second thing with them. Last year I wanted to make an advent calendar with toilet rolls, but we didn’t have enough rolls at home (and I decided to make it last minute, so there was no time to collect them), so I made something else. So this year I had put away toilet rolls throughout the year, and now I had a huge bunch of them stored away. And I just had my mind set on using them too. So I did.

I did decide to use it somewhat differently though. This one is not full of things. It is actually empty. Yes, you heard (read) me right. One side is open. It is a calendar of Thankfulness. Because there is so much to be thankful for… and it has been on my mind this year a lot. We have been through such a difficult year, but I very strongly feel, that still, no matter our hardships to almost even put food on the table in a certain period of this year, we still have so much. So much. As opposed to others in this world, who struggle even so much more.
I know Liv is still young to fully understand this, but she has already such difficult themes going through her head, I thought it might be a good idea to bring in this idea of thankfulness. So each day, we say one thing what we are thankful for. And “put” it inside. In the end it will be (hopefully) full. And we can read all of the things we were thankful for on Christmas Eve.

I hope it will work out. :-)

It can be any little thing. I don’t interfere with what she says she’s thankful for. Today for example it was that daddy bought new plasters (band-aids). :-)

(Liv also came up with taping over the numbers of the days gone by, to see better the countdown of left days till Christmas. What a good idea!)

Oh, almost forgot. What did we put inside this year?

Well, actually Liv really needed new socks, panties and (less needed, but still) slippers. So not wanting to buy too many un-needed stuff, and not wanting to spend too much (and having to buy those anyway) I took advantage of that and put it in there. Also, I saw those cute wooden traffic signs somewhere for 6 euros. Liv loves to play with cars and she’s very interested in traffic signs lately. When we go somewhere we talk a lot about what those signs mean. So I bought those. And divided these into a few days. 11, to be exact. :-)

The rest is some little things. A play-dough, two lollipops, chocolate lollipop and two chocolate coins, a stamp, a cookie cutter, a jingle bell, a cute little striped suitcase, a wooden whale to paint on, decorative tapes, cooked chestnuts (Liv loves those), modeling clay and this thingy you can look through different glasses you add to see how insects see (cool, not?).

I didn’t put numbers on the houses this time. I meant to. But then I thought… ah who cares, it doesn’t matter in what order she will open them.

Fun fact for the end. I put each slipper in a different house (because the houses were too small to put in both into one). Ha. :-)