Honor this tradition by creating your own Advent calendars. They're fun and can be made easier for the littler ones, or more involved and elaborate for bigger kids.
If you really want to help your family truly understand just what it is we're celebrating this holiday season, make several of these calendars filled with treats and goodies and take them to a local women’s shelter to share with their children.
Advent Trees
- A miniature Advent tree that's really a rosemary bush from the local nursery is just the right height for little ones to call their own . Label 24 tiny boxes with numbers 1 through 24 with a red or green marker. Inside each box hid an ornament for children to hang on the 'tree' to mark each day of December leading up to Christmas.
- Create an Advent Tree by potting up a miniature pine tree in an old bucket or a basket. Hang envelopes filled with treats for the little ones.
- Shelter to a cozy crew of tiny hand-made stuffed animals on a miniature Fir tree. Stamp or hand-letter the Advent dates onto key tags and attach to each animal. Nestle finger puppets or stuffed animals into new baby socks, and tie off with colorful yarn.
Bucket Brigade
Create a charming Advent calendar using tiny galvanized buckets from the dime store, each hung with ribbon and lined with a pretty fabric scrap, concealing a hidden trinket. Like many Advent calendars, the days are placed out of order so the treat seeker has to go on a mini treasure hunt.
Perfect Match
Wrap 24 empty matchboxes in sleeves of paper, leaving box ends uncovered so they can be slid open to add or remove candies. Glue festive holiday wrapping paper into an empty picture frame by first removing the glass. Add numbers to a corner of each match boxes and then Velcro boxes to the frame.
Sweet Envelopes
Offer daily surprises with this simple Advent calendar. Fill small envelopes with treats, seal with adhesive numbers, and punch a hole in a corner. Hang from cording strung across a gift-wrap-covered bulletin board.
Mitten Advent Calendar
Outgrown or orphan mittens make perfect containers for Advent treats. Mark the numbers 1 through 24 onto key tags and then wire to each mitten and add a ribbon bow. Clip the mittens onto a wire or thick cording stretched across a dress or fireplace mantel, filled with little surprises and treats. If you have no mittens, tiny baby socks work just as well.
Cookie Treats Calendar
Spend an afternoon baking up cookies from a favorite family recipe. Poke a hole in each cookie before baking. When baked and cooled, ice with royal icing and pipe the numbers on the cookies. Tie each one with a pretty ribbon and hang on a small tree or branches “planted” in a weathered bucket filled with hard candies to hold the branch in place
Preserving Tradition
Fill small jelly jars or glass votives with sweet treats and top each container with a decorative paper lid fastened with a golden ribbon. Label the numbers to the glasses with a gold pen from a craft store.
