Advent Calendar

Welcome December! This is my FAVORITE time of the year. I love everything about Christmas and now that I'm a mom I get to watch the little prince experience the wonders and joys of the holiday as well.

Part of the Christmas season for me is about tradition - decorating the Christmas tree, listening to Christmas music, dinner with my family - creating those memories that you take with you throughout your life.

The Advent calendar was not a part of my childhood Christmas tradition but I decided this would be a great way to reinforce the story of the birth of Christ in a way that was fun for my four year old. Of course I got the bright idea to create our own calendar instead of buying one. Why do I do this to myself? I don't know about you, but whenever I say "this will be easy" I have automatically set myself up for a much longer process than originally anticipated and this calendar was no exception...lol!

Using plain white posterboard, some Christmas fabric that I've had for a while, some thin ribbon and scrapbook paper I set to work on making a calendar that we can use for years to come.

The completed calendar

Each pocket has a card with a picture on it that corresponds to the story

I took a small Christmas photo album (10 pages) that I found in the dollar bin at Target last year and covered it in one of the remaining pieces of fabric; added the story to the pages and now we have a coordinating Christmas story book. Though you can't see it clearly here, the story is divided into 'days' to correspond to the numbered pockets.

A close-up of the pockets and the three different fabric designs used.

Even though this took longer than expected (we were three days behind), I'm happy that I now have something that I can use with my son for many more Christmases to come.

Off I go to work on a few other projects...let's hope that at least one or two more Christmas crafts will make its way into blog-world.

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