Advent/ Countdown to Christmas Calendar

While I am feeding the little babe, my source of entertainment is either facebook or pinterest (on my phone). I cannot have the tv on or other people in the room because he is such a distracted little fellow. With Christmas approaching, I have been pinning all these fun Christmas activities, goodies and ideas. I have the habit of pinning things, then completely forgetting about them, only to go back and look at my board and think, "Why didn't we do that?!?" I wanted a way to organize all the fun Christmas ideas, so I got thinking to making an Advent/ Countdown to Christmas calendar. I am not too familiar with advent calendars, but through my research it seems like you get a little treat everyday. I didn't really want to go that route, but rather the 'experience' route. I thought it would be fun to have a new activity, recipe, or treat to do everyday leading up to Christmas.  Now that we also have a little kiddo, I thought it would be a fun new Christmas tradition to start! I know that Zach is only 7 1/2 months old and he is too young to do any of these things, but I figured since I have the time (and enthusiasm) I might as well make it this year, that way it is ready to go years to come! My hubs thinks I am a little crazy, making an advent calendar for a 7 1/2 month old, and it has been at the end of many of his jokes lately. Tonight while we were praying for our dinner, he thanked the Lord for our advent calendar. He should be thankful! I think he (and the rest of our kiddos) will love it many years to come!

cute little festive embellishments are buttons! 

I went to pinterest to see what ideas were out there for advent calendars. This idea was a combination of several that I saw, put together into one. I saw one that were socks strung on a line, and thought it was cute. Instead of socks, I thought it would be fun to do little stockings. I thought the stockings would also be fun because then you could have the activity hidden away inside and pull it out each day. I also wanted to have something where you could take it down each day. That way the kids could physically count how many days were left until Christmas.

holly. gingerbread men. snowflakes. toy soldier. evergreen trees. 

 cute, festive clothespins to easily assemble and disassemble. 

This vision and idea for this advent calendar came together while I was shopping. I found the red and green stockings and twine at Walmart, then went to Michael's to see what fun little embellishments could go on the stockings to make it a little more festive and decorative. Originally I thought I would get embellishments in the scrapbooking aisle but I came across these tiny, festive buttons and thought they were perfect.  I liked the gingerbread men, the snowmen, the soldier, the bear and sled because it seemed kid-appropriate. Since this is for our kiddo, and hopefully more kids to come down the line, I wanted it to be something they would enjoy and look forward to. 

 activity for the day nestled in the stocking. 

Last, I typed up the activities and printed them out on cardstock. Here are a list of ideas that I used to fill our advent calendar with.

• ·         Decorate Christmas Tree
• ·         Drive to see Christmas Lights
•          *Present- Christmas Coloring book- color some pages
• ·         Make a Christmas craft
• ·         Decorate a Gingerbread House
• ·         Drink hot chocolate/ hot chocolate bar with cake pops attached to candy canes
• ·         Decorate Sugar cookies
• ·         Make Christmas cookies and deliver them to the neighbors
• ·         Have Christmas Floats: Peppermint ice cream with hot chocolate
• ·         Breakfast for dinner: pancakes in winter shapes- snowman breakfast
• ·         Make pizza for dinner- shaped like candy cane and snowman
• ·         Watch a special Christmas movie
• ·         Make an ornament for the tree
• ·         *Present- Read a new Christmas book/story
• ·         Make snowflakes and decorate the windows in your room
• ·         Sing Christmas carols
• ·         Have a picnic by the Christmas Tree
• ·         Pick out toy and donate it to a child in need
• ·         Go to the Biltmore at Christmastime
• ·         Go ice skating
• ·         Go Christmas shopping and wrap presents
• ·         Make gingerbread or peppermint play dough
• ·         Make cake pops
• ·         Unwrap a present early
• ·         Make your own life-sized gingerbread house with a cardboard box.
• ·         Go to the Grove Park Inn and look at the National Gingerbread House competition.
• ·         Go to Snow Mountain.

 

 printed in a fun, colored font with little, festive pictures

After many days of thinking, shopping, planning and working- the advent calendar is finished and we are officially counting down the days to Christmas!

Here is how I made it:

Materials: 
- Twine
- 24 Little stockings (Dollar Store, Walmart, Target- I found mine at Walmart: a pack of 4 for 98 cents!)
- Little clothespins (I found decorative ones at Michael's but plain would work too!)
- Festive embellishments or buttons
- Number stickers or cut out numbers using a cricut
- Cardstock to print out activity cards

Directions:
- Using the clothespins, start stringing the stockings. Spread them as far apart or close together as you like. *Don't cut the twine until all stockings are on- that way you know how long to make it.
- Depending on the thickness of your twine, double or triple it. I tripled my twine to make it a little more sturdy to hang the stockings from.
- Tie a loop at each end of the twine so that you can hang your advent stocking garland.
- Reposition/ adjust your stockings to desired places
- Number your stockings using either stickers or cut them out on cardstock using a cricut machine. You can either start numbering them with 1 (as if starting on December 1) or start at 24 (and show the remaining number of days until Christmas). I kept going back and forth but ultimately my OCD won out and I decided to start at 1.
- Add your buttons/ embellishments using a hot glue gun.
- Type up your experiences and print them out on cardstock. Cut them out and place them in the corresponding day.

I love the way that it turned out! Thanks to my mom who went shopping with me and help make some executive decisions about the embellishments. To my sister Jen, who helped assemble the stockings and decide where each embellishment should go. And my sister Hillary who let me borrow her cricut machine :) Even though I won't really be using it this year (although I was so excited that I almost bought Zach a Christmas coloring book at the store. I then realized how crazy that was and got my senses back and moved on) I am excited that it is made and ready to go for next year and the years after that. I think it is a fun new tradition for us to start with our expanding family :)

P.S.- 21 days to Christmas!