For the last few years we've made our own Advent calendar. Last year, I got a bit carried away and it looked like this...
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Admittedly the kids had nearly as much fun playing with all the boxes as they did opening them, nearly.
The year before I'd made a much simpler one. I used a big piece of cardboard, made some super sparkly pegs and stuck it all together with a hot glue gun.
And two years before, we just made trees. First, there was this beauty -
This was a whole family project - even our nine month old got to add her bit.
We also made some ornaments to go on our tree from coloured rice and some shapes I'd cut out of lightweight cardboard.
Not that the nine month old helped with those. She much preferred the shakers we made from the leftover rice.
The following year I made a felt year in an effort to stop the now 21 month old from rearranging all the ornaments on the 'real' tree. To this day it remains one of my most favourite finds on Pinterest.
Inside our Advent calendar, I usually print out a series of notes to go inside. Sometimes I'll add something to the note like this fake snow and a couple of polar bears from last year.
Often it will be an invitation to make something like making white Christmas and decorating gingerbread,
Or to decorate pretend gingerbread houses - these I'd made from recycled cardboard from the packaging from The Book Depository.
Or make reindeer food,
Or gifts for their teachers or grandparents,
Or cards for their friends.
In amongst all the making will be simpler notes like read a Christmas book, go see the Christmas lights, go swimming or go to one of the Christmas pageants.
What do you do in the leadup to Christmas?
I'm pinning more things to my Christmas board so why not take a look there if you need some more inspiration?
Here's hoping nobody gets too carried away this Christmas ;)
