Make Your Own Advent Calendar

My family is not religious, but we do have some cultural "rituals" we observe over the holidays. We always had a real Christmas tree, and it was decorated with candles. My father used to light the candles, when we were younger, and we would watch as they would burn down. We were very careful as to where the candles were placed on the tree, and we never left it unattended. We don't light them anymore, but my parents still put candles on their tree. We also decorated our tree with chocolate candies covered in multicoloured sprinkles.

Another tradition in our home was an Advent calendar. They are quite common place now, but when I was growing up, most of my friends did not have Advent calendars. My parents would often have to go to the German shop to buy our calendars. Usually, we got those with chocolate treats, but sometimes my parents would buy ones with toys, and candies inside.

When my niece and nephew were younger, my mom sent them 24 little gift bags for them to open during the month of December. I think she bought mostly things from Dollarama to fill the bags. Inspired by this, I decided a few years back, to make my own, reusuable Advent calendar. There are so many ideas on the Internet for crafting your own calendar. A friend of mine is doing a scrapbook style one, with tags inside 12 pockets one two pages. I opted for a matchbox one.

There are also many different styles of matchbox calendars. I chose to follow the Martha Stewart design. You can see her example at the following link: http://www.marthastewart.com/265851/m-is-for-matchbox-advent-calendar

I ended up cutting the matchboxes by hand, out of cardstock. I had some Christmas themed paper from the dollar store to wrap around the trays I cut, folded, and glued. Then I glued them together in a 3X8 box. I painted a Christmas tree on one side, and put numbers on the other side. The trays usually contained a little note of what we would do that day, or the treat the kids would recieve. The boxes are big enough to put small thing in, like stickers, tatoos, or even mini ornaments. Once a date is selected, the tray goes back, with the image side showing, gradually relvealing the Christmas tree.

I know it is a little late to start making your own calendar this year, but there are so many ideas out there. This was the one I chose. My kids love trying to find the date. They never know what is going to be written on the note inside. Plus, it kind of helps for organizing your holidays. You can decide when you are going to do some family baking, get the tree, decorate the house. If you happen to have 24 empty matchboxes on hand, this is super simple to make. I Googled at pattern for a box. http://static.swap-bot.com/files/traditionalmatchboxtemplate.pdf

 

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