Day 3 of Christmas Crafting: Fancy Felt Ornament

Today's title comes courtesy of Patrick.  When I was working on my craft tonight, Patrick was impressed and said it was fancy.  Me, I don't think it's so fancy, but it was more time consuming than I expected, so I decided it was a worthy title.

Today's ornament was directly inspired by this pin on Pinterest, which was originally from here. (If you want to make one of these, I recommend going to the original source. Her instructions were so perfect, I didn't think it was worth trying to duplicate them!)  I fell in love with this ornament as soon as I saw it and knew I wanted to make some for our tree.  I didn't look difficult, required very few supplies, and I knew it would be tough for Claire to break.

Well, ends up it was harder than I thought, but still totally doable.  This is probably because it's been ages since I've sewn anything by hand, and I was not as precise as I could have been. In fact, my stitching down the middle is laughable at best.  But, the end result turned out ok, and I'm excited to see if I get better when I make another.  Here's what I did:

And here's a view from the top.

And there you have it, another beautiful kid-friendly ornament for our tree.  I love that this one is so elegant, yet sturdy.

And ya can't beat the price.  I used about half a piece of 9x12 felt, and about a third a thing of DMC Embroidery Floss.   I got both on sale, and had some spare ribbon laying around for the top, so that made this ornament about $0.25 to make.  I'll take it!

In other holiday prep news, I thought I'd share some of the Christmas countdown activities we're doing around here.   I'm like a kid at Christmas, and I've always been a fan of countdowns, so needless to say one little countdown calendar wasn't gonna do.  No, currently we have 2 different activities going (not to mentioned the countdown app on my phone), and I'm thinking of starting a third.  I can't help myself!

Our first activity is one that I've done for several years now, ever since my parents bought me a beautiful Advent Tree.  It was a Costco special, and I love it.  Turns out, Claire loves it, too.  In fact, when I got it out of the box she was so excited, that she had a hard time just looking at it.  And every day when we tell her it's time to get the tree, she gets so excited!  Here she is exploring it with Patrick:

See how excited she is?

Gosh, that look gets me every time.  So darn cute.  She was even more excited when she got to take an ornament out of one of the boxes to put on the tree:

And totally entranced with the ornament...

After she picks an ornament, she gets to pick where to hang it on the tree.  Then, she spins the tree around and around, opening up all the cubby holes and them shutting them again.  We have to gently remind her from time to time that we have to wait to take more ornaments out, but that doesn't spoil her fun.  She loves this tree, and that makes me so happy!

Do you guys have any countdown traditions?  You know I'm always looking for more... :)