DIY Advent Calendar

It’s November and it’s the start of our holiday blogs leading up to Christmas. We’re doing crafts, gifts, and foods that are inspired by one of our Christmas cards.

The first card is our four little Christmas trees card.

We’re going to share with you how to make an advent calendar. Big advent calendars with little treats/themes are so interesting to me. I’ve seen ones with nail polish, socks, jams etc. that you can buy and I’ve seen people make up personalized ones for people in their lives. My mom made one for me leading up to my Birthday (since my birthday is on the 26^th it worked perfect) but doing the same for a friend or loved one is something that I find so neat.

The advent calendar that we are choosing to show you how to make is really simple and can be made with simple items that you can find in your home.

You will need 25 toilet paper rolls, green, brown, and yellow paint and tissue paper, a glue stick, a metallic felt pen, and little gifts.

Once you have enough toilet paper rolls, paint one of them yellow, three of them brown, and the remaining of them green.

While they are drying, cut your tissue paper. You want to make sure that the tissue is slightly longer than the roll and has enough to go around the roll with a little flap to overlap. Cut two pieces per roll and then also cut two pieces to cover the tops, a big enough rectangle to go around the ends.

Once the rolls have dried start the long process of gluing the tissue paper over the rolls and the tops. Leave an opening at one of the ends so that you can put your gift inside. We covered one of the ends first and then rolled rest afterwards to cover up the scraggly ends. If you want to reuse this calendar then don’t glue the end piece. Glue the body of the roll and then use the green tissue to cover the end by attaching it with an elastic band or green thin ribbon.

When choosing gifts be creative and try to personalize it a bit for the person who is going to open it. You can pick candy, chocolate, jewellery, money, stationary, nail polish, lip balm, key chains, or anything that would fit or that you can make fit into the rolls. If you want to make a bigger calendar than use things like Pringles cans or mailing tubes and do the same process.

Now it’s assembling time. Glue your rolls together to form a tree with a stump and star on top.

Place all of your gifts inside the rolls. For the backing, we’ve picked a piece of white poster paper because that’s what we had but if you’re going to reuse this then you can get a heavier duty cardstock or cardboard in green to match the tree. Glue the backing on.

Once you have the backing on, then all you have left to do is to write the numbers on the tree. We are using a metallic pen to write a mix of numbers and words in random order. You can do your numbering however you like though.

Here is your finished advent Christmas tree calendar.

Christmas Tradition #6 - Advent Calendars

It’s another week closer to Christmas so we have another Christmas tradition post ready for you. Something that I looked forward to when I was little was getting an Advent Calendar. I don’t get them anymore, but the other day as I was looking at various ads for Christmas items, I saw so many cool grown up Advent Calendars so I thought I’d take a look at the tradition.  

Advent Calendars were first created by Gerhard Lang in the early 1900’s. It was featured in a newspaper as a gift to the readers and it was made of 24 coloured pictures that were attached to cardboard. Eventually, he added little doors to the pictures which is what we see in most of the Advent Calendars that we have today.   

Nowadays there are so many types of Advent Calendars so take a look below and see the different ones that we found.

This is the type that I like. It’s a makeup Advent Calendar with a different product each day. Many different brands will have one so look for your favourite beauty brand and treat yourself. 

  

I didn’t realize that this type existed, but now I have to plan better and get myself a nail polish Advent Calendar for next year and I can try a different colour every day. 

For a tea lover, this one is perfect. You can taste test a different tea each day up until Christmas and there’s enough to share with someone special. If you’re a coffee fan then there’s also coffee varieties available by different companies as well.

Beer every day could be a very interesting lead up to Christmas. 

This is the most traditional advent calendar. Open up a window each day up until Christmas day and get a delicious treat.

If you’re willing to splurge then try this calendar which has 12 days of stud earring by top jewelry brands! This is my type of calendar.

Marshmallows with different flavors, mmmmmm, so good.

 Pork cracklings. This one could be very very interesting. You have to have a pork lover to give this one to or an adventurous foodie.

Who doesn’t love cheese? This one will give you a taste of a different cheese each day.

 This is a fun one for kids of all ages. It’s a Play-Doh Advent Calendar. You’ll open up the doors to find a different moulding tool or colour of Play-Doh to play with.

This one is cool and something that you can keep for years to come. It is a wooden tree with little doors that you can fill up with things for your loved ones each year. You can do a different theme each year! You can make or buy reusable Advent Calendars so that you can fill it yourself each year with something different.

If you have a sweet tooth or baker in mind then this is a perfect calendar for them. It has different jellies and preserves each day for them to experiment with and try out. 

This is seriously a cool calendar...it’s a Lego Advent that includes Legos and accessories for each day leading up to Christmas.

There are even ones for pets. This one is for a dog but they have ones for cats and other animals as well.

I’m sure there are so many other types of Advent Calendars out there. I was amazed as I looked to find these ones at how many cool ones there are out there to satisfy everyone’s wants and needs. I definitely think that the beauty products ones are very, very cool!