As you can see by the banner above, the countdown to Christmas is ON! We are also counting down in our home on my childhood Advent calendar. My mom made it for me well over 30 years ago.
Isn't it adorable?! I love its vintage charm~especially the rick-rack. Each numbered pocket has a mini ornament inside. The kids love taking turns each day hanging up the ornaments.
For quite a few years the calendar stayed in storage due to a ripped seam in the middle of the tree. After I got married and decided I wanted to unpack it, I did my best to repair it. But as you can see below, I have no talent in the hand-stitching department. (I can't believe I'm really showing these terrible stitches on here!)
We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...