Count Down to Christmas

I originally saw this idea on my friend's blog. She got it from here. I loved the idea that all the activities were service oriented, but soon realized that there are only so many 'good deeds' a 2 year old, 4 year old, and pregnant woman can accomplish in one month. So I decided to mix in service items like send Christmas cards to the missionaries and take treats to neighbors, with more traditional, fun advent kinds of activities like adding ornaments to the tree, drinking hot chocolate, reading Christmas stories, and of course, my all time favorite activity from when I was a kid: camping out under the Christmas tree (I call the couch!). The magnet board was something that I already had and that was being under-utilized. I found the cute paper, magnets, and wooden disks at Michaels. The original tutorial used those glass stone thing-a-mabobbers, but I couldn't find any big enough and was too impatient to go anywhere else. So I just got round wooden disks, painted them white, printed out all the numbers 1-24 from my computer, used my circle punch to cut them out, then glued them to the disks. They aren't nearly as cute as the original, but I actually think I like them better because of the way they go with the patterned paper that I have.

Because I do use this magnet board for something else during the rest of the year, I stuck everything, including the large 'christmas countdown' letters, on with double sided tape. Hopefully someday this advent calendar will have it's very own home, but for now, I needed it to be temporary. I also used double sided tape to stick the events onto the backs of the patterned paper so that I could switch them around if I needed to.

So there it is! Our first official advent calendar and my first official Christmas craft of the year!