Christmas Advent Calendar

I LOVE Christmas!  I love the lights, the caroling, the giving of gifts, the parties, the birth of our Savoir, basically everything that comes along with that wonderful holiday called Christmas.  My children also love Christmas, but unfortunately they love receiving presents above all things.  They are little, so I know that this is normal, but I don't want to be normal.  I decided that we needed to start some new family traditions, and I wanted to teach my children to have a heart for others. So, this is what I came up with...

It isn't just your normal count down the days until Christmas, Advent calendar, it is twenty five days worth of traditions and giving.  Each day is a different activity, but I will get to that in a minute. 

I need to first let you know that I did not come up with this idea completely by myself.  I had to look for direction from my dear friend Pinterest.

Here is how we, meaning my children and I, put this little beauty together.

We started out by purchasing a large piece of black foam board and a large frame that fit it.  We found ours at hobby lobby, half price frame day because I'm cheap. We also loaded up on Christmas scrapbook items. Buttons, ribbons, stickers, pretty Christmas scrapbook papers, and blank tags were on the list.

I then cut out and made these little pockets.  I just made them big enough to fit my tags. For those of you needing exact measurements, when folded they are 5 inches tall x 3 inches wide.

I used about five different papers for my pockets, and some of the paper was just plain white on one side.  For these papers, I glued a little square of pretty paper over the part that would be sticking up. I just liked it better this way because I have am slightly OCD.  Notice, I said slightly.  

After you have cut out twenty five of these little guys, it is time to glue them into pockets. 

Let the fun begin! Decorate your pockets in your style.  My children are all little, but we had fun decorating our advent pockets.  They did most of the gluing and placing of stickers and I just played the role of general designer, tying most of the knots and bows.

Here is a close up of some of our finished pockets.

When all our pockets were finished we arranged them on our framed foam board, five across and five down, and glued them down.  

The tags are the last, but most important part.  These will be the traditions and services that you and your family will fulfill each day.  I was so excited for this part, and again my dear friend Pinterest saved the day.  I had a list of ideas, but was in need of some inspiration, when I came across two amazing blogs.  lillightomine.com has the Light'em Up project and tsjphotography.com/blog has R.A.C.K'ed

Both of these ladies are amazing and have tons of ideas and compassion for encouraging and serving others.

These are just a few of our tags, nothing special, just hand written and a sticker or some ribbon attached. 

My children and I had so much fun with our advent calendar, it amazed me how excited they were to see what the next days activity would be.  I loved seeing their smiling faces after participating in an act of kindness, or watching their happy dance because it felt so good to give.

Sorry, my post is so far from Christmas, but maybe that will give you time to make  an advent calendar of your own.