DIY Advent Calendar

You step on Matchbox cars, I slip on paper towel rolls.

You have paper plates in your cabinet, I have a stack full of blank Frisbees.

You ground your kids from tv and video games, and last week I threatened to take away his pipe cleaners and glue for the day if he didn’t pick his shoes up.

This is my life. The Mom of a crafter. A boy crafter.

Jack and I recently made an Advent calendar. Since he has been asking me {daily} for the past 2 months when Christmas will be here, the countdown calendar was the perfect craft for us. Here’s how we made our DIY Advent Calendar!

Our DIY Advent Calendar supply list:

Elmer’s Tri-fold display board

Glitter glue

Elmer’s Craft Bond Dual Tip Glue Pen

Tub of gift tags

Cello bags

8 sheets scrapbook paper

Plain white envelopes

Sticker letters and numbers

Bag of holiday candy

First, we gathered our scrapbook paper and cut each piece into 6×6 pieces.

Then, we arranged and glued the pieces on the tri-fold board. They didn’t fit perfectly, so we cut a few pieces into 3×6 squares and filled it all in.

At this point, Jack had found some paper people (not dolls) that I had stuffed away and began making replicas of him and his brother for one of our days :)

I stuck number stickers from 1-25 to each square, making sure that the numbers were spaced apart (make sure 1-9 aren’t all on the right side of the board).

Our stickers didn’t all match, and that was ok. The only thing I was concerned with was that the numbers were always on the top left corner of the square, so it would be easier for him to find them.

After getting all the numbers stuck on, the fun part started. We stuffed cello bags with a few pieces of candy, packets of hot cocoa, or candy canes. I stuffed envelopes with surprises for the boys (papers that said “Special brother movie night – you get the living room tv for the night!” and “Hot Cocoa by the fire pit tonight!”). We wrote ideas on the back of gift tags. We thought long and hard about fun things that we could do each night to countdown.

Here are some of our calendar squares:

And here is our finished product:

The only problem is… he is constantly asking “how many days until I can start my calendar?” I might have to make an advent calendar for the start of the advent calendar!