Grandma’s Countdown to Christmas

Collect twenty-five small treasures for your grandkids and hide them away until November. Then send an Advent collection or, if you are lucky enough to be close to them, go and place the treasures somewhere special in their houses. Ideas include small toys, mini bags of goldfish, stickers, books, socks or mittens, edible sprinkles for decorating cookies, or even a five-dollar bill. (I shop the day after Christmas to get a few holiday things super cheap.)

Cute packaging ideas for this tradition:

• Buy paper sandwich bags from Target or your favorite bakery. Either choose bags with holiday themes (snowflakes, snowmen, Santas)—or buy plain bags and get busy decorating them with stickers.
• Buy inexpensive red mittens, fun holiday socks, or tiny stockings to fill with treasures.
• Even something as simple as red and green Solo cups can work well, as can any paper Christmas-decorated drinking cups.
• Use different sizes of decorated boxes and glue them on a board or set them on a windowsill.
• Use the little red gauze bags that are pulled at the top by ribbons.
• Go to any container store and buy simple white boxes.

Use a sticker to decorate, add the numbers to your packages, and fill them with the treasures. You can hang the bags on yarn with clothes pins, string them across a doorway, or place them on a dresser. And the countdown is on.

If you want to drive yourself nuts, this idea also works as a countdown to Halloween, Easter, or a birthday. And if it is Easter or Halloween . . . it just might be penny candy in each box.

Just imagine the excitement that builds over the years as the babies grow and Grandma keeps up this tradition.