Advent Tree

Exhale....and on to Christmas! The day after Thanksgiving it is tradition in our home to get our Christmas tree, put lights up and turn on the Christmas tunes! Ahhh, it really is the most wonderful time of the year!
It seemed only appropriate that we start off the week with a Christmas craft that will be used for the month or at least 24 days of the month. A few weeks ago I came across a bag of coin roll wrappers at the dollar store. I frequent the dollar store for art supplies very often, you never now what you may find useful there especially when you are doing crafts often with little ones. Anyway, I grabbed this bag of coin wrappers and hoped to find a good use for them. Well, this weekend we did, we made Advent Tress! This was a lot of fun and so much anticipation for December 1st to arrive now. Of course as soon as we finished these adorable trees Grandpa strolls in with the very large chocolate a day Advent calendar from Trader Joe's. Oh well, I really don't think Emma and Grayson mind having too many "candy a day" options to open.

What you need:
24 coin wrappers
tacky glue (elmers is not strong enough)
green paint
pom-poms, gems, stickers, beads (anything to decorate the tree)
star
small candy (tootsie rolls and sixlets worked well)

First you will start by gluing the coin rolls into a tree form. This has to dry for a couple hours after so you may want to do this step the night before and have it ready to decorate in the morning. Once your tree is dry let your child paint it green, this will also need to dry for a bit before adding ornaments. Use beads, pom poms, dried pasta, glitter, ribbon and anything else around the house that can be glued on that tree to make it shine!  Add your star to the top. We painted a wood star yellow, but you could even just cut one out of paper and use craysons to color it. Once everything is decorated and dry fill the rolls with candies to be enjoyed for 24 days of December. Let the count down begin!