Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Light the World Part Two

So I just wanted to give you guys some more ideas with my advent calendar set up.






















If you haven't read Part One of this post, go back and read it first!
Originally, I had my advent calendar on the back of my wardrobe (see the picture on the right), but I ended up moving it to my front door so all the girls in my dorm could participate too!! (left picture) I left a note on my door that said "#lighttheworld Treat under each! Feel free to participate." I've had lots of the girls in my hall show interest in participating, so I was really excited to make the calendar available to them.
Here are the very simple steps for creating your own calendar:
1.) Print out all of the cards: In my last post, I posted a link to the place where you can find them. I printed these out in color for about $2.00 at my school's library, but if you're feeling like being extra cheap, you can print them out in black and white too
2.)Write out on sticky notes your gift for each day: You can see my last post for some ideas.
3.) Tape or sticky tack the cards to your door: Under each card, put one of your sticky note rewards. That way, each day you can lift up the card and see what your surprise for the day is! Personally, I liked using sticky tack to hold down the cards because that way, it is really easy to lift up them up and see what is under them.
And that's it! My roommate and I have been doing the challenges on the cards for the past couple days, and we've been having a lot of fun lighting the world. I wish you all the best of luck in lighting up the world too!

Light the World Part One

Hello guys!
So, I've got something super cool to share with you all today.
For those of you who don't know, there's a new social media Christmas challenge for this year to #lighttheworld! If you don't yet know anything about this yet, watch this sweet video to learn more.
People all across the world have taken this idea of lighting up the world and ran with it. If you just search #lighttheworld on social media, you'll find thousands of examples of people doing just that.
Well, I wanted to hop on that service bandwagon. As a college kid, however, my life is a lot different than other people's lives. I pretty much fit the stereotype of an ordinary college student. I am consistently dead broke and dead tired (but I haven't died yet!), I eat cereal for dinner sometimes (because why not?) and I walk in the snow in flip flops (hey, I was too lazy for boots). Although I love being at college, its sometimes hard to get into the true Christmas spirit when I am so far away from home. When I watched the video on lighting the world, however, I was inspired and knew I wanted to get involved in lighting the world in my own little way.
One blog that has some great ideas on how to light up the world this Christmas season is the blog Brightly Street. Please check out her AMAZING ideas here. She made a cool advent calendar to keep track of the daily themes for the Light the World challenge. I was inspired by the idea and have tweaked it to fit into my crazy college kid life. So today, I'm going to give my appropriately cheap, easy, and lazy college version of her wonderful idea.
First off, I printed out all of her advent calendar's cards (you can get them here). There are cards for each day of December, and each card has a song, scripture, video, and challenge associated with it. I then wanted to think of some way to have treats to go with my calendar. Most advent calendars come with a little piece of almost edible chocolate for each day. Instead of this, I wrote a "college" style treat for each day on sticky notes and then stuck the sticky notes under each card.
Here's the list of my treats, but feel free to get creative and make your own!
Day 1: Make a snowman
Day 2: Go Christmas shopping
Day 3: Netflix time!
Day 4: Watch the LDS Christmas Devotional in your pjs
Day 5: Vending Machine Snack
Day 6: 10 minute break for Facebook or Instagram
Day 7: Eat dessert today!
Day 8: Eat ice cream today (for me, I specified BYU Creamery ice cream because that stuff is LIFE)
Day 9: Make a blanket fort and study in it
Day 10: Movie Night!
Day 11: Call one of your little siblings or cousins
Day 12: Go for a walk and watch the sunset
Day 13: Pamper yourself! Dress up, do your nails or hair, whatever you like.
Day 14: Vending Machine Snack (you can never have too many)
Day 15: Music Jam session
Day 16: Temple Trip
I stopped here, because we all start going home for Christmas around the 17th, and for me, that's gift enough. You may want to extend or change your daily gifts, depending on your Christmas break plans. Other ideas include going out to eat with friends, Skyping people from home, going to sleep early or waking up late (which, I think, is the best gift in the world!), or go off campus exploring.
More ideas on a college Christmas coming soon!