12.01.2012

EASY DIY ADVENT CALENDAR

How did December sneak up on us? Do you know what that mean? It means we have to hurry and get all of our holiday decor done by next week! Well at least for me it does.

Every year I tell myself that I will not be decorating for Christmas all December and every year I do. This time around, I decided to lite the fire under my own butt and get things done. For instance, we have an advent calendar!

I've always wanted to make an advent calendar for my boys and figured this was 'The Year' to do it. I knew I wanted it to be simple because I knew I was going to wait till the last minute to do it. With our advent calendar, that's exactly what I got. The hardest part about this project was coming up with the activities and deciding on what day is best for each activity -__-

 

Here's how to recreate our advent calendar:

Start by coming up with a list of activities or scriptures or whatever you want your calendar to consist of. Since I have 3 boys I knew all of the activities for ours had to be something the 3 could do AND be cheap... Ha!

some of our activities include going to grandma and granddads house, riding Macy's pink pig, going to see Christmas lights, making hot chocolate and watching the polar express, wearing new pjs to bed, ice cream after school, dancing contest to Christmas music, buying and dropping off Toys for Tots, going to the movies, making teachers gifts, wrapping cousins presents, making cookies for Santa, writing a note to Santa and dropping it in the mail, etc...

There are so many things to do so be creative!

Next up is gathering supplies

again, simple was the key word here. I purchased some Kraft paper tags from Michael's, I had the clothes pins already (from the thrift store!), a sharpie, and some jute string.

I wrote out the numbers 1-24 on each card and then on the other side, I wrote a simple note of what we were going to do for that particular day

After the numbers and activities were written on the tags, I strung them on the jute using the clothes pins

And there you have it... Our easy peasy advent calendar! So ummm, I totally forgot about our Christmas stockings. Maybe I can hang the stockings behind the tags? We'll see.

Did you make or buy one this year? If you haven't made one and want to, by all means do it! It's only Dec.1st!

 

 

5 comments:

Abby M. Interiors said...

Thank you for posting this! I love it! I'm going to share this on my blog but I'll be sure to give you the credit. Your boys are so lucky to have you as their mom!
Abby

Brandi said...

Your mantle looks soooooo nice. I love your advent calendar as well. Have fun doing your daily activities.

Anonymous said...

That is a great idea! I wish I'd seen this before 12/17. I'll have to remember this for next year.
Carrie

Anonymous said...

That is a great idea! I wish I'd seen this before 12/17. I'll have to remember this for next year.
Carrie

elizabeth s said...

It is Feb 2013 now but in reviewing this post I have to add to the mix, my 2 cents worth, too! The mantle is WOnderful!!!! I love the way you mixed the neutrals together and I think the advent calendar is Brilliant! Well done and very festive with out being too 'themey'.
What's up for next Christmas?

elizabeth