My kids have been looking forward to doing our Christmas advents again–I talked about them last year and thought I’d post about them again this year.
One of them is a cute little advent tree where each day they open a little door, pull out a little ornament and hang it on a small tree.
The picture above is the one I made last year and we love it! Brandon and Annie can hardly wait each day to see what treat is inside each tin. I used small tins (about 3 inches in diameter) from Roberts, made round covers for the lids in photoshop (using a variety of digital scrapbooking products from www.ggdigitaldesigns.com, www.digitalscrapbookmemories.com, www.digitaldesignessentials.com, etc) and printed them out and used tiny glue dots to keep them inside the lids. Then I hot-glued the tins to a canvas that is about 28 inches by 21 inches. It’s a pretty big canvas, the picture doesn’t really show how big it is. Inside each tin are 2 pieces of candy to help us count down the days until Christmas. Just something a little fun for the kids. They love it! We also try to read a Christmas book each night together.
Here are some other links to advent calendar ideas if you wanted to make your own. There are some cute ones out there. I want to do one with different Christmas activities to do as a family–I’ll post it if I ever get around to making it. 
I love this one my awesomely cute friend Alisha made: http://alishaw.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/digi-scrap-advent/
http://www.quietfish.com/notebook/?p=1244
http://spraguelab.squarespace.com/blog/2007/12/1/december-1-calendar-time-d.html
http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/advent_calendar/
http://tipjunkie.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-christmas-advent-calenders.html
http://tipjunkie.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-advent-calendars.html
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
This is such a cute idea, I love it!
I just was thinking today that i forgot to get around to that. maybe i’ll get some ideas for next year.
Too cute. As always. K…so I looked up Alisha’s blog from here. Hello! That was a cute advent too. You two are too crafty for your own knickers.
Cute idea – one day when I get organized I’ll have to do that…by then my kids will be so old they won’t care anymore
So you are way talented and you have way talented friends. I guess you talented people just stick together. Is that why you don’t hang out with me? Because I am talentless? Oh well, I guess I will still keep hanging around you hoping that some of your talent will rub off on me.
You’re so cute, Brooke! We do the family activities advent and it is truly sweet and keeps us focused on each other and the memories/traditions we want to create each year.
And thanks for the nice comment. I feel that I need to give you credit, because you not only inspire, but you share that talent and info, and that’s how I taught myself little by little how to digiscrap. So a big THANK YOU to you!!
I love you! I just asked about advent calendars on 2Peas the other day. I need to make something like this for the kiddos. Thanks for the ideas.