I am not a sewer.  I like to knit, cook (thanks Captain Obvious) but taking my rather ancient sewing machine out and producing something without indebting myself heavily to the swear jar is almost impossible.
This is not how I want to start Christmas traditions with my wee one. 
What I would like is for the kiddo to look forward to Christmas but not become overwhelmed with all the hype.  I want a child that shares and knows the meaning of Christmas and maybe we can even work on some counting skills?  I perhaps overthink things.
I spotted these adorable Advent Bags on Pinterest months ago and knew that I wanted to do something similar.
Photo Blog Morgan Michener Ornaments Christmas
(image via houseandhome)
I found some sparkly bags at the dollar store and my original plan was to attach a Christmas trinket for each day onto the bags and then we would count them each day, open the bag and take the verse or treat to the babysitter to share.

I dutifully started to sew on all the bits to the bags after dividing everything up and…they stareted to look awful pretty quickly.  Not to mention that I would likely be finished around the same time that my child graduated from University with a doctorate or two. 
Plan B.  I’ll use these little bags as gift tags for quite sometime and perhaps even as part of my wee one’s birthday for lootbags and a beanbag activity that I have in the back of my head. 
I was able to find instead;
adorable gold buckets and my very helpful neighbour.
I decided to decorate with handprints,
some stick-on bling that I already have, tester pots of paint from the reno
and some of my favourite bible verses. 
I’ll add more handprints each year as the wee one grows not so wee and she can even take over the decoration as she grows as I’ve put in 12 bible verses for this year.  Stamps take care of the numbers
and branches from the garden will be the home to the bags each season.
We’ve got; crayons to share, hair ties to share, a special treat for the babysitter (who reads this blog periodically so I won’t say what it is), a dress-up outfit to share
and best of all the story of Christmas to unfold as the days progress so that we can talk about it as a family.
I was able to find a toddler version here:  http://www.imom.com/tools/seasonal/the-story-of-christmas/
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