CTMH White Pines Australasian Blog Hop

Welcome to our Australasian Close to My Heart Blog Hop featuring this months feature paper pack called White Pines. We have all been creating with the White Pines Products. If you have arrived here from Patricia Manhire's Creative Corner then you are in the right place. If you landed here another way, please join in by following the link at the end of this post. Follow the links, check out all the amazing ideas and eventually you'll come right back here to where you started.

I began this creative Session with the Picture My Life™ White Pines Scrapbooking Program pack and pulled it all out to look at it and get "inspiration". I really liked all the PML (Picture My Life) cards with the dates on them and thought it would make a great Advent Calendar. 

Last week I donated two boxful's of books to a teacher for a 3yr old program from an under privileged area a few suburbs away from me. She said they had identified a need that these children were "at risk" of illiteracy problems and the way they had decided to address this was to give the children a 12 days of Christmas, a daily gift of books, so that they had books in their home that their parents could read to them. This is what my 2nd hand children's books were going to. This reminded me of the great idea that I'd seen before, probably on pinterest, to do an advent calendar of books that you can read together with your children. I decided that this would be a great idea to do this year with my kids this year and the Picture My Life™ White Pines Scrapbooking Program pack was totally PERFECT. 

Last year I purchased a whole heap of brown paper wrapping paper from Big W. The label below says they cost $2 but they were reduced when I bought them (I bought as many as I could carry because I knew I would use it!!). I have used this brown paper in other blog posts I have done on this blog, coordinating wrapping paper with Birthday cards etc, its great for stamping on also! I think the brown paper looks great with the Picture My Life™ White Pines Scrapbooking Program "Advent Tags". The December cards didn't require much if any decoration to make the presents look interesting and fun!

Next I went to my bookshelf and pulled out all the Christmas books I had, then I pulled out all the Love and Kindness books I could find to make it up to 24 books. I mixed them up and did Big book then small book (because the PML cards are big/small/big/small) and mixed up the Christmas books with the other type of books so there was a selection each day something different. ALL the Christmas books went into the pile spread out and I removed the funny shaped books because I wanted to have them presents be square/rectangle shapes. I was amazed at how many Christmas themed books we actually had. The more I looked the more I found, in all the different bookshelves around the house!
  

    

I started December 1 with The Elf on the Shelf because our Elf Sprinkles will be arriving around the 1st December so what a perfect time to read her story. 

On the outside of the very first wrapped gift/book I added an extra PML journalling box for the gift tag. A Marvy® Uchida® LePen™ Journaling Pen and Gold Shimmer Trim finished off present Number 1. 

Each day of December (until Christmas Eve) we are going to open one of the books and read it with the kids as a family. I didn't keep a record of what I put in each present so it will be a surprise to me too!! I am very excited about this time together, reading books that the kids are almost too grown up to read but as a family we can still giggle along to "Father Christmas needs a Wee" or sing the Australian Christmas versions of stories and songs. 

It took me quite a while to wrap and to put the cards onto every package and I had to decide which side of the cards I wanted to use. The new PML cards are the same pattern on both sides but one vertical and one horizontal - which does sometimes minutely change the design of some of the cards, but because I wasn't restricted to the PML Memory Protectors™ telling me which way I need to place the cards I could choose which side I wanted to use. NB: I decided not to use the December 25 card because we're not going to read anything on Christmas day. Some of the cards with cute little animals were best suited to one way or the other because of the way the animals weren't cut off. 

When I finished I had used some of my washi tape (Boardwalk Washi Tape Pack, Sparkle & Shine Washi Tape 3-Pack and Smoothie Striped Washi Tape). These are all available in the While Stocks Last and Retired section on my website (online purchases only, not available at Gatherings). I also used lots of SHIMMER TRIM... Red & Gold mostly. Plus a bit of bling. Although I decided I didn't want to use the bling because I wanted the presents to be able to stack flat. 

Now that all my presents are wrapped for my Reading Advent Calendar and I can't wait for Christmas season to start!! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Thanks so much for dropping by to check out my latest projects. I'm really interested to hear what you think about it, so I'd love you to leave a comment before heading off to the next stop on our Australasian Blog Hop which is Maz: Inky Fingers.

  Come back to see me again soon.