Advent Calendars

I love advent calendars, but have to say that I very rarely see any that I like all that much. Some of the paper ones are beautiful, but they wear down really easily, and most others are just really kitschy/scrapbooky.

We had the ultimate advent calendar growing up, and I already have plans to replicate it once we move back to the states. Basically, it was a small stick frame tree, and from it hung tiny muslin bags, each numbered. Inside each bag were wooden figures, e.g. a small ball, a horse, a star. Every night us kids would feel the outside of the bag and try to guess what item was inside. It was simple, beautiful, and made for some nice memories.

Well, when I saw Jordan's advent calendar post on Oh Happy Day, I got really excited because it somewhat reminded me of the one from childhood, and it was one of the first homemade versions that I actually really liked. So for our young women's activity this week (yes, I am in Young Women's again, yay!), I decided to have the girls make calendars.

For budgetary reasons, I modified her's a bit, but I still like the way they turned out.

Instead of bags, I used small money envelopes. This meant I could use sticky labels, not iron-on, which also saved a ton of money. Because the envelopes were so small though, I couldn't use the PDF template she provided, and instead designed my own numbers in Illustrator.

To display the final product, I cut out a ring of cardboard and used clothespins (or as they say in the UK, pegs) to attach them.

Here's how they turned out