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Hello, hello my friends!<\/p>\n
If you’re in the US, I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend to kick off the holiday season. Mine was quiet and very low-key, which is exactly how I like my my celebrations, especially celebrations about gratitude.<\/p>\n
One of the things I’ve been working on over the long weekend is the annual Advent Calendar. It’s going to go on top of the piano, and this tradition is a much beloved one in our family. As I was cutting and assembling, I realized that this will be my 10th Advent Calendar. 10 years!! Isn’t that mind-boggling? As always, I’ve listed all the calendars I’ve made to date at the bottom. <\/p>\n
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It’s always a challenge to come up with a different concept, and this year I designed a bunch of patterns, then I folded them into triangular boxes (I followed the tutorial from here<\/a>, but made my own template of quatrefoil shapes). Aren’t the patterns cute? Can you find the boba tea and volleyball ones? You can tell that I had a lot of fun trying to make them holiday-esque! I created about 30 designs total but obviously only used 25, and tried to include a few motifs that represent K’s favorite things. I had a “doh!” moment, however, when I noticed that I forgot to include a music-related pattern. Music is at the top of her favorite things list! That and true crime podcasts, which I also didn’t include. What would I have drawn? Knives and blood and dead people? Crime tape?<\/p>\n So I started by cutting out the shape…<\/p>\n Then folded in the “petal” edges…<\/p>\n Then folded each triangle inward to create the square base…<\/p>\n Added the filling and punched a hole in each petal tip…<\/p>\n Threaded a cord through and attached a little circular label (for the countdown numbers 1-25)….<\/p>\n And voila!<\/p>\n I was especially proud of the idea of including a puzzle piece every day. I got one of those DIY puzzles from an art store and painted it with watercolors. I love that she’ll be able to slowly put together the puzzle throughout the month.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fun, right?<\/p>\n Here they are…adorable triangular gift boxes, ready to be opened (sorry for the image quality — I was rapidly losing natural light):<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Every year I like to offer up some free printable holiday tags for YOU, and realized that I could simply reduce the size of the quatrefoil shapes into sweet little tags. You know how much I love tags! If you’d like to download some tags from years past, scroll down after the list of Advent Calendars.<\/p>\n For this year I selected 12 of the designs that felt more generally appropriate (you probably don’t want a volleyball themed tag, right?) and arranged them onto one sheet as tags. Click on the image or here<\/a> to download the file. I recommend printing them on card stock or textured paper like my go-to Inkjet paper<\/a> for best results. <\/p>\n I’m so excited for K to see the calendar tomorrow morning (December 1st)! That’s the most thrilling moment for me: when she wakes up and beholds the whole shabang.<\/p>\n By the way, if you’re subscribed to receive blog posts by email, I’ve switched email services and will be sending the blog posts from a different email address (sanae[at]sanaeishida.com), so you may find the blog updates in your promotions tab or in your spam folder. Please have a look there if you notice that you haven’t been getting updates from me. Thank you!!!<\/p>\n Oh, and here are the past Advent Calendars:<\/p>\n 2020<\/a><\/p>\n 2019<\/a><\/p>\n 2018<\/a><\/p>\n 2017<\/a><\/p>\n 2016<\/a><\/p>\n 2015<\/a><\/p>\n 2014<\/a><\/p>\n 2013<\/a><\/p>\n 2012<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n And here are tags from years past for your convenience if you’d like more options:<\/p>\n 2020 Tags<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cat Wreath Tags<\/a><\/p>\n More Cat Tags<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2021Advent-3.jpg\")
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