Advent calendar 2014: toilet rolls and Junior Mints

Blueprint for Advent calendar 2013

Last year, I had such plans for an Advent calendar but the Zeds were not on board. This year, in keeping with my transformation into one of those people, I began collecting toilet rolls the moment Z1 showed any inkling of interest in making our own countdown to Christmas calendar.



We had a busy weekend, that last weekend of November which had been designated as our Christmas decorating weekend what with December beginning on Monday. Saturday involved a birthday party and a car breakdown and fireworks in Nathan Phillips Square. Sunday was to be the day of the decorations.

Toilet rolls attached, tin foil
and tape used abundantly

 Z1 was on cutting-up-toilet-rolls duty. I was rather more severe than necessary with her when she cut a couple of toilet roll segments too narrow to be able to hold sweets. I then pulled myself together and we headed off to our beloved Dollarama to buy the sweets for fillings. It was a glorious no-coat-in-November day. We used Hershey's kisses before but neither of the Zeds really seemed to like them. I don't blame them, it is not good chocolate.  This year, Z1 chose Junior Mints and Z2 got some fruit jellies.

Compartments filled with jellies

The finished product - ta da!

Z2 was not an active participant in this project. Z1 drew some little pictures in each compartment and the star on top and presents under the tree. She lovingly filled each hole with a mint and a jelly each...until disaster struck. She tried a mint and discovered she didn't like them. Thankfully, we had plenty of jellies so I ate all the mints and replaced them with jellies in the compartments.

After the Zeds were asleep in bed and the mints were eaten, I settled down with a Sharpie and the roll of tin foil to be used to cover each compartment. It was a bit tedious and I was a bit sloppy with it, truth be known but know this too: I was careful in mixing up the numbers so each day will be a hunt. This is in contrast to the fate of some of the poor, unfortunate people with Cadbury's calendars who have been using #adventcalendarproblems on Twitter over the last few days*.


*If you can't find it or don't bother clicking, people were complaining that all the numbers on their Cadbury's calendars are in order ruining the fun of having to track the day's number down each day.

A Bed 'Hanopy' for Z1

One thing I found when I started looking at Pinterest is that I began to see ideas for projects everywhere. This idea for a bed canopy was from a drawing in a Fancy Nancy book that Z1 borrowed from the school library. I am not a big fan of the books but Z1 is and I do quite like using the word fancy so it's ok overall.

The "hanopy" in place

The main inspiration from the book was the use of brush handles to hold it up. Dollarama sells patterned brush handles and I have a rather great love of Dollarama. I bought the fabric from an ebay shop for around $10 including postage. My part-time job from my undergrad days came in handy in figuring out how much fabric I would need -  knowledge of bed measurements and duvet sizes is a transferable skill that I use more often than I ever thought I would.

The corners at the head of the bed are tied to the curtain rail which is ugly and unnecessarily extends to the corner of the room rather than only across the width of the window. I reached this by holding onto the window frame and balancing precariously on the bed head while praying it wouldn't crack. It's quite hard to tie a knot with one hand while balancing like that and I used my teeth to pull it tight. I'm terribly innovative.

Z1 picked two different brush handles which irked me a little.

I, fairly predictably, lost my will to live enthusiasm for the project a bit when attaching the handles to the bed got a bit tricky. I used sticky tape and various long pliable items found in Z1's room in a haphazard manner to attach them with minimal swearing. I am pleased with how it turned out, even with non-matching brush handles. Z1 says it looks like it is made from fairy dust and charmingly refers to it as a "hanopy". It does make the bed unsuitable for jumping on but I was never that keen on the bed being jumped on in the first place so that's fine.