Our Advent Calendar

For the past few years I have wanted to get an advent calendar for the Christmas season, but haven't found one I liked. I thought this would be something fun to do with our kids now. We had one when growing up and I remember enjoying looking at it each day. I also remember that one year my parents had an advent book where we were supposed to read a page from it each day during December. I think we tried doing this in the mornings before school and I don't think that went over very well - too busy in the mornings!

Anyway, I couldn't find a calendar I liked to buy so decided to try and make one. I searched Pinterest and found several advent calendars that looked fairly easy to make and very neat, too. I didn't want something too big and wanted something that would be interactive and easy for kids to use. I am quite pleased with the one I settled on and proud of the way it turned out.

Each tin has a Bible verse in it to read for the advent season so the idea is to open the tin that corresponds with the day in December and read the verse. I plan on adding a few pieces of candy or a note listing something fun to do for the day in the tin, too. Here's a picture of the final product, made using scrapbook paper, 2" party favor tins, a 12x12 shadow box and frame, Velcro, number stickers, and spray adhesive. (Sorry the picture is turned sideways. I can't figure out how to turn pictures on here.)

You can click here to see the original blog post I got the idea from. I tweaked mine a bit from the original idea. Here are my steps:

1.  I used spray adhesive to adhere the scrapbook paper to the top of the glass from the shadowbox frame to serve as the calendar background.
2.  I bought the 2" favor tins at Michael's (Wilton brand) and made a 2" circle template to cut out 25 circles to put on the inside of the top of each tin.
3.  I used spray adhesive to adhere the circles to the inside top of the tins.
4.  I found the number stickers at Hobby Lobby and put them on the outside of each tin.
5.  For the inside of each tin, I cut 25 more circles and taped them to the inside bottom of each tin.
6.  I found a posting on Pinterest that gave a listing of Bible verses to read each day during the Christmas season and wrote the verse location on a sticker that came with the tins. I placed the stickers on the circles for the inside of the tins.
7.  I simply used tape to adhere the verse circles and stickers to the inside of each tin. I could have used spray adhesive, but just didn't want to deal with the sticky mess that it can sometimes be.
8.  The original blog post about this calendar said to adhere the background scrapbook paper to a sheet of metal and glue magnets onto the back of each tin to get the tins to stick to the board. I didn't want to go this route so decided to use Velcro. I bought a package of small Velcro rectangles, cut them in half, and stuck them to the background and tin. The tins are so light that they will stay on the board with just the Velcro and it will be easy to take the tins off and on each day if needed.

I'm so proud of this project! It really wasn't that hard or time-consuming to make and using 40% off coupons and catching sales helped keep the price down! I'll try following it this year, but realize it might be a little bit lost on Lucy. Perhaps next year, though!