GRANDMOTHER'S SEWING ROOM: Advent Calendar

I wanted to make something special for Nathan his 2nd year away from home at Christmas.  I decided to make an advent calendar.  I found the embroidery designs on DesignBySick site, and thought it would be fun to have Nathan get a tiny gift daily till Christmas.

 These are some of the individual designs.  There are 24 different ones.  I sewed onto felt, then made a felt background to sew the pockets on.  I made tabs with large buttons at the top and had a dowel rod for it to hang on. The dowel rod, however, did not get mailed as it was a bit too long.
It was fun filling up the pockets. I 
wish I could have put a different gift card into each pocket, but that would have been too costly for me.  I did, however, get one from McDonalds, one from Taco Bell, and one for Red Robin and put in 3 of the pockets.  If I had remembered before mailing, I would have ordered a couple from Restaurant.com.  There are usually some pretty good deals on there. Some of the things I included in the pockets are:

• Gift cards
• sticky notes
• packs of gum
• tic tacks
• tiny plush animal
• breath mint strips
• chocolate coins
• tiny bottle (I thought he could save sand from 'The Sound' in it as a keep sake.
• Yoo Hoo drink mix (could have been any of the 'straws' that you mix in water)
• little hand sanitizer

Anyway, now (if he brings it home! lol) he will have a keepsake that he might fill up for someone next year, or we might fill up and send to his brother who will be away on a mission.  I hope it is something he can keep and use with his own family someday.