Advent Calendar- Finished!

 I finished the advent calendar, and just in time. It looks super cute if I do say so myself.

Over the last month I came up with a few more fun, bag decorating ideas.

#8's obvious inspiration is a snowman. I just drew an eight with sharpy and colored him in with crayon. I really like the home-made look.

Hot glued buttons give #1 and 9 a cute, home-spun look.

I let Jack help decorate a few, as can be seen on #3, 16, and 19. It gives a very unique, personal touch, and he gets to see his own art as a part of our decorations. And this is all for him, after all.

My very, favorites are the last two I made. It would be really cute to make a full set in either one of these designs. #22 and 23.

#22 is a collage of randomly cut strips of construction paper. I also cut the numbers free hand to add to the "blocky-ness."

#23 is inspired by all the fun, coffee filter decor on pinterest lately. I used the kind made for four cup coffee makers, and it turned out to be the perfect size for my bags. Just take a small stack of filters. Cut in towards the flat bottom. Cut out the circle. You now have a long, slightly curved, pleated strip. Cut this strip in half your strips are all the perfect length. Glue to the bag in individual layers from the bottom up. Stop a few inches from the top, where you want the fold to be. I also used a couple of the circles I cut out and a label sticker to make the number tag.

You may ask what happened to #24? Christmas is the 25th right? The plan is to open his Christmas Jammies that day, and I figured that would take a bigger bag.

I hope this gives you some fun ideas to play with or inspires something totally new! I sure had fun and I think Jack likes it too.

Advent Calendar- First Steps

I've started working on an Advent Calendar for my son. And yes I did start at a random number in the middle of the month. To start I'm using:

• paper lunch bags
• old wrapping paper
• glue sticks
• glitter glue
• gift tag stickers
• scissors

Right now I'm just decorating the bags with the dates.


14 and 11 have numbers cut out of wrapping paper. I glued them down and them outlined with glitter glue. Tip: I drew the numbers on the back of the paper before trying to cut. And remember to draw them backwards.

For 10 and 12 I cut wrapping paper the same length as the bags, but about 1" wider on either side of the width. First glue just the front of the bag to the center of the paper. Then open up one side at a time and glue down the extended wrapping paper. This gives a neat, gift wrapped appearance.


You can decorate them however you like. As simply as writing the numbers with markers or glitter. Or make each one a complete, unique scrapbook page. Latter on I'll probably pull out some ribbons, buttons, colored pencils, etc, and see what else I come up with. Just be sure to leave  the top four or five inches mostly clear of decoration, so that they can be folded over and clothes pinned.


The plan is to fill them with candies, dollar store toys, small hand made gifts, tree ornaments, or an activity for the day. My only limits on contents are the size of the bags and that they be light weight enough to be hung with clothes pins on a garland of some kind.


Day 24 will probably need to be a larger gift bag, since that day is going to be the Christmas Jammies. And at the end of the line I'll hang his stocking.


I'm hoping that if I only try to get a few of the bags done at a time, I might it completed by December 1st. Baby steps, baby steps.