The Kirsty Files: because January birthdays are special too...

My littlest's birthday is in January. Its hard to compete with the Christmas high that just happened. I am trying to come up with ways to celebrate him and his month! So I decided to make a birthday countdown of sorts. I got the idea from this company, mix that with all these fabulous Advent calendars of the last month, add that my younger son is learning to count, and behold our countdown chain...

Here's what I did...

First my older son and I picked out a bunch of fun small items for his younger brother , sometimes we bought two in the event that my younger son would want to share with his older brother or it was an activity that they both could do together like bubbles.

{Side note} I really wanted my oldest to participate because we are working on having joy and being excited to give others gifts, not just receive them! For a 3.5 year old this is a challenge but he got really into it and has been super excited each day for his brother to open that days package. Of course it helps that he is also benefitting from his younger brother's treasures. Baby steps here folks.

Ok project, then we lined them up in ten groupings {for ten a ten day countdown} on parchment paper...

Then folded and pinned with alligator clips so I could sew a zig zag stitch on the sewing maching, but you could easily tie with jute or butchers twine or pipe cleaners {older siblings could do this one by themselves even}...

and of course numbered the days...

Then we hung it up! {I added some old circle garland from birthdays past that I had because we just needed more color, which is literally twine with punched card stock circles that I just stapled to it}