HALLELUJAH!!!

It's a Christmas miracle!! 

You see I had this brilliant idea to make an advent calender on Black Friday! 

I wanted to make one last year but never got around to it, I then had the intention of making it after Christmas to be all set to go for this year.  YEAH RIGHT!  Well on Black Friday I was doing a bit of shopping and ended up at JoAnn Fabrics where they were having a crazy sale.  While there I picked up some felt and some Christmas fabric and decided to make an advent calendar.

I must have been out of my mind!  This left me just 4 days to complete this project in time to use it.  Add in the fact that I wanted to decorate and we decided it was a good time to clear out the crawl space meaning hours of sorting and re-organizing.  Well I didn't actually get started on this until Monday! 

I had always wondered why people would pay $8-10 just for the pattern.  I can now tell you why, it's a huge pain in the butt!  I spent a couple hours Sunday night making the tree and figuring out measurements.  How tall to make the rows, how far apart, how much space on each side, how wide to make each pocket....AAHHH!  Way more involved than I though it would be but then again I was only going to make a simple one without the tree...you see what happened.

Well it is finally 100% done, most of it was finished last night but I added a few more bells and some loops today.  I can say that I'm pleased with how it turned out and my son is now obsessed with "the calendar" so I guess this can be deemed a success.  Never again, though, will I have this "brilliant idea" 4 days before it is needed!!

Here is a close up of the pockets.  There are numbers on them but they blend in a lot and are hard to see.  At first I was quite bummed about it but now I don't mind it since it doesn't deter from the cute fabric I picked.  When your close they are obvious enough to see.

 The tree.

 And finally an action shot!  Sorry it's so dark but it was nighttime (obviously).