This past December I put together 12 dates of Christmas for Matt and myself! I collected some various ideas online, but mostly put together a list of things we enjoy doing at Christmas, along with a few special activities. I just wanted to do something a little different this year! And I wanted to do something to remember the fun things we did together to celebrate the season.  I tried to make most of the dates cheap, so that we didn’t spend a fortune going out 12 times during an already expensive time of year!

After I made the list of our dates, I had to do a bit of shopping. To remember the things we did on our dates, I decided to make or buy an ornament for each date. (I LOVE Christmas ornaments.) I wrote on the ornament which date of Christmas it was and the year (I usually did this on the back of the ornament). Some of the dates required an additional small gift for the date to happen, so I had to buy a few things. Then I wrapped up the gifts and made little notes about each date. Then I put the gifts (if any), the ornaments, and the date notes into separate brown paper bags, which I tied with pretty ribbons and pretty numbered gift tags I made – one for each date!

Here are the dates we did:

Date #1: Seeing The Nutcracker

We went down to Denver to see the Colorado Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker! It was wonderful! I love going to the ballet, so this was a big treat for me, but also for Matt who’d never seen The Nutcracker before. Glad we fixed that! And I gave Matt an adorable little Nutcracker ornament to remember our night out!

Date #2: Watching Elf

Elf is one of Matt’s favorite Christmas movies, so it definitely made the date list. We snuggled down by the fire with the kitties and watched Elf! And I made this adorable ornament out of a small piece of wood from a craft store, red paint, glitter stickers, and ribbon! Easy and cute!

Date #3: Watching It’s a Wonderful Life

We LOVE this movie, so it also had to make the date list. And again, I made a lovely ornament to go along with it! This ornament is made of the same wood, along with some silver scrapbooking paper, glitter stickers, snowflake paper punches, and white paint and ribbon.

In this picture, you can also see the gift tag and note that went along with this date.

Date #4: Enjoying lights in Old Town

Our downtown puts on a beautiful light display all winter long, so on this date we bundled up, made some hot chocolate to go, and headed to old town to walk around and enjoy the lights. It  was so pretty! If only there had been some snow too! The ornament for this date was a small glittery light bulb shaped ornament!

Date #5: Watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas

This is one of the few great Christmas movies we did not yet own, so I had to buy it to stick in the date bag! Again we snuggled up with the kitties and the fire, and watched the good old Grinch.

The ornament for this date is also one I made. This one is hard to see in the picture, but I painted another wood piece red, then put some green patterned scrapbooking paper on it. Then I printed out on white cardstock the phrase from the movie, “Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store, maybe perhaps Christmas means a little bit more”. I mounted that on top of the green paper, attached a red ribbon, and it was ready to go!

Date #6: Lights at the city gardens

Our city gardens do a wonderful light display every Christmas. We had never been to see them, so I made it a date and we checked them out! The night we went was extremely cold, so we might have rushed through the gardens a bit, but it was definitely worth it. The lights were beautiful! The ornament for this date was another small light bulb, but just a shiny one, not a glittery one! (Seen in picture for date 7!)

Date #7: Watching Home Alone

This movie is too funny not to watch at Christmas time! So we locked our doors, snuggled up, and watched Kevin defeat the wet bandits! My ornament for this date was a key to our house with a heart on it, on a pretty ribbon!

Date #8: Reading Christmas books

I love Christmas stories! And since we don’t have kids (yet!), we only had a couple of little Christmas books I’d brought along from home. I decided we needed a couple of the classics, so I picked up The Polar Express and The Night Before Christmas and wrapped them up for Matt! We snuggled up by the fire, with the kitties, of course, and Matt read the books to me. Such a nice evening! The ornament for the night was a pair of Christmas bells.

Date #9: Baking Christmas Cookies

What’s Christmas without Christmas cookies? Even though it’s just the two of us, we had to make some cookies to enjoy, and to pass around at our workplaces! Yum! The ornament for the night was a really cute cookie snowflake ornament.

Here’s a picture of Matt swirling  the mints on our  Andes Mint Cookies!

Date #10: The Muppet Christmas Carol

This is probably my all time favorite Christmas movie. It’s definitely not Christmas without watching the Muppet Christmas Carol! It’s just so good! The ornament for this date was another one I made, with a quote from one of the songs from the movie!

Date #11: Driving around to see Christmas Lights

This is something my family always likes to do, and Matt’s family too – but since we don’t spend Christmas here in Colorado, we’ve never really checked out the lights around here. So I decided that we should make that a date! Again, we made some hot chocolate to go, Matt looked up where the best lights were in town (thanks, google!) and we headed out! We saw some really impressive displays!

Date #12: Our Christmas in Colorado

We always celebrate our Christmas together right before we go to home for the holidays, so that was our last Christmas date! We went out for a nice dinner, then came home and exchanged gifts! The ornament for this date was a snowflake ornament frame, which now holds this picture of our little family!

All in all, we had a very merry Christmas! To add to the wonderful things we did, one of my friends gave us an amazing advent calendar of gifts this year, and Matt made my gifts extra fun too! Christmas really is the most wonderful time of year! Full of love, family, and surprises.