Mix-it-Up Monday: Advent Calendar

The countdown to Christmas has started at our house. (Of course the kids have been counting down since before Halloween...)

In order to quell some of the incessant questions about how many more days are left, I decided we'd try our hands at an advent calendar. In all the ideas I looked at, this one seemed the most suited to the age and skill levels of my kids (let's be honest, we're really talking about MY skill level, aren't we?).

I started with some left over cardboard boxes we had in the garage, cut the longer sides off, and measured to get 6 rows of 4 columns that were roughly equal. Then poked a hole at the intersection of each set of lines and covered the whole thing with paper. (We used tissue paper, but only because I couldn't find the wrapping paper.)

Then we poked holes in the bottom of Dixie cups, put a brad through them, then through the hole in the cardboard and fastened them in the back.


I had the girls put candy in each cup (leftover Halloween candy we're getting rid of, yay!) making sure that each one fit below the lip of the cup.

Then we cut out small squares of tissue paper, wrote numbers on them (couldn't find my number stamps...) and secured them to the lip of the cups by rubbing glue stick all around the rim.


We got to poke open the number 1 tonight after dinner. The girls loved it!

All in all, it was pretty simple and inexpensive to put together, and wouldn't have taken much time if I had been able to find all my supplies that are currently buried in boxes somewhere.

Now I at least have something to point to when they ask me how many more days are left!