I put our advent calendar up today. It should have gone up Friday night but I was a little behind on things (like finding the calendar). I made this calendar in a quilting class a few years ago. It takes advantage of a panel print to make all the little pockets. I love it every time I get it out; the colours are so bright and jewel like and in the class we used gold thread for all of the top stitching.
 
I was having trouble deciding what to put in all the pockets this year. I’ve used chocolate coins and mini candy canes before but I wanted something a little less sweet this year. I eventually came up with the idea of putting a slip of paper in each pocket. Each paper has a number at the top (which sticks out of the pocket) and directions on the bottom. The directions are all holiday or winter activities like “Drink hot cocoa” or “Watch White Christmas”. I hope it will be a fun way to count the days until Christmas.
 

Zeke got a new toy for Christmas. A catnip egg roll loosely based on the “Feline dim sum” pattern from Knitty. I had started off making the wanton but it was going to take me too long to knit the whole square so it turned into a half size egg roll (bind offs and decreases meant the knitting would gradually get faster).

Zeke was very curious about the catnip when I got it off the shelf so he got a pinch on the carpet to stop him from crawling into my lap. He seems to thoroughly enjoy his new toy.


I found it this morning and it looks like I will need to do a little more sewing to keep it together past tomorrow.

Rob and I dressed the house up for Christmas a couple of weeks ago. It was a lot of fun to set up the tree and rediscover all the ornaments. There are a few things I haven’t managed to find yet (like my Christmas Jell-Gems) but we got most things set up.

We’ve discover that Zeke is particularly fond of the Christmas tree. Not only does he enjoy sleeping under the lights but apparently it tastes really good too! He climbs onto the side of the couch to get the higher branches or just stands on the floor and gnaws on the tips of the bottom ones. It must be a pretty good flavour because you can hear him purring from across the room. We do our best to discourage this since there is no way of knowing what the tree is made of.

As far as sleeping under the tree goes, Zeke looks quite cute. He’ll sit under there and watch me in the kitchen. He seemed a bit annoyed when I finally started to put presents under the tree.