I always like to start off the Christmas Countdowns on my blog with an idea for a DIY Christmas Countdown that you and your loved ones can enjoy together. It’s not too late to make one for yourself. It’s easy, and you can start it tonight!
One of our favorite family traditions each Christmas is a countdown, or advent calendar. I made this one last year using one of my most-used crafting tools, the Envelope Punch Board from We R Memory Keepers. (You can also make this with the 123 Punch Board.) We’re using it again this year, and it’s been so fun!
In our family we do an advent calendar each December for the 25 days leading up to Christmas. We do fun seasonal activities as a family all month long, so the purpose of our advent calendar is to help our family focus on what the Christmas holiday means to us.
Each envelope is filled with a slip of paper that contains an advent scripture verse, an inspirational Christmas quote, or the title of an inspirational video to watch. We gather as a family each night and take turns pulling out the paper from that day’s envelope. We do our advent reading (or watch our video) with all the light off except the Christmas tree, and then each of the kids gets to pick a small treat from our advent treat basket.
This advent calendar was easy to make. I simply followed the instructions on the board to make 25 different sizes and shapes of envelopes using the DIY Party 12×12 Paper Pad. I have a certain amount of space to hang them above my fireplace, so I kept the envelopes to 3 1/2 inches wide or less. Then I cut some numbers with my Cameo using gold cardstock from the new DIY Party collection 12×12 Cardstock Pad. I hung my envelopes on green striped baker’s twine using mini wooden clothespins.
This has become one of our favorite Christmas activities! Our whole family looks forward to it each year. We even sent one to our adult son who is away from home this year.
Have a wonderful day friends! I’ll see you back here on tomorrow with some more holiday inspiration!
