Our Advent-ish Calendar

Azia checking out Day #5.

 This is our version of an advent calendar. We didn't do the full four weeks before Christmas, and only some days are tied to advent activities and readings and reflections, but the kids were pretty excited to have a way to count down the days till Christmas.

 We got a bunch of plain cardboard boxes & the kids painted them Christmasy colors.

The kids also liked picking out all the numbers to label the front of the box.

Azia made Day #9 into a Santa looking fellow.

Day Twenty was my favorite.

We just used a super thin piece of ply-board & hot glued all the boxes on. When we decided to put the quote on too, I didn't have any more board so I just cut a piece of cardboard off our wall calendar (the year is almost over!) and then spray painted it. I wish I would have just done this instead of buying a board-- it worked just as well & I didn't have to buy anything. I was going to stencil letters on this, but I didn't have time so we just printed the quote and covered it with modge podge.

This is our final product. It seems to be blending into my white wall! And it's not quite final since (as you can see) we are missing Day #23.  Somehow the box disappeared before we even painted them and you can't buy anything like that around here. So, sometime soon I need to go get another box.

The kids are enjoying it so far. We've been filling it with small pieces of candy and some sort of activity for everyone to do. I'm only a day ahead of them, both because I don't have all the options figured out and also because I'm sure if we left them all filled on the wall Lex would empty them all the first day. He is barely three and doesn't yet have a lot of patience.

Next year I'll be a little more prepared!