25 Days to Christmas & a Present for YOU!

The 25 Days of Christmas has officially begun in our house...well the advent calendar is up and the 1st little giftie will be opened tonight. *

We have an extremely long mantel - the entire wall.  So I decided to create the countdown to span a good portion of the wall.  With the TV as the focal point, I wanted to add different holiday elements.  I thought  it would be perfect to set all the presents on the mantel as well - to add some holiday spirit there.

I used the countdown tags as the gift tags so the little mister would know which present went for each day.

We've kept with traditional Christmas colors - red, green and silver.  To create the countdown, I used ribbon and tape to secure the paper to the ribbon.  I punched red, green, silver and holiday printables and put everything in random order.

I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out.  For the last 5 years, we've used our Pottery Barn Kids advent calendar (the one with the pockets and you put the present in the pocket).  I do like that one, but this year, I wanted it to be more of a festive feature in our home.

As a little holiday cheer for you...you can download the countdown here and as a special treat, you can download some matching to/from tags that match here.

Enjoy the pictures...

Oh and I thought it would be fun to make some homemade confetti for the mantel.

* Insert a little dose on honesty here...the tradition has always been that the little mister opens the present in the morning...BUT he pitched the biggest fit about having to wear pants today - he wanted to wear shorts (it was freezing this morning, the wind gusting and he could have blown over on his walk to school).  So...even though I was super excited about our countdown to Christmas - I had to put my mama hat on and let him know that it wasn't OK.  So tonight it is...