The BIG Advent

I've always wanted an Advent calendar. Those neat ones with the little cardboard doors and windows that open to reveal a piece of cheap chocolate or instruct you to do some random act of kindness.

I never had one as a kid. Not that I was vocal about my desire to have an advent calendar, but I have secretly always wanted one. I've even reasoned with myself as an adult making my own money---that I could in fact buy one of I wanted, but the allure wore off when I could actually buy one on my own..It became one of those, "ohh, that's cute, but I don't want to spend $20 on it" (insert husband's nickname for my thrifty-ness here) items.

Well, leave it to Martha, then improved by the painter family blog for a DIY advent that I went nuts for upon laying my eyes upon this fantabulous idea.

{photo: Painter Family Blog}

A trip to Joanne's on Saturday (where I may or may not have ruined a cashier's day by insisting my gift card had $40 on it, when he told me I owed $3.27 after a $12 purchase...only to realize as the manager was being called to remedy my complaint...that I was using an old card..pulled out my newest GC and lo-and-behold...there was my$40 credit..I apologized profusely, by the way) lead me to realize that buying 25 paper mache boxes of varying sizes was a bit more than I wanted to spend...So, I bought 10 18x18 sheets of black and white polka-dotted scrapbook paper and headed to the Dollar Tree to attack plan B for my rendition of an advent calendar..I had seen another cute idea where clothespins were used to hold cellophane baggies filled with treats, so I purchased a set of clothespins for $1, came home and spray painted them red, and got to MOD podging my scrapbook paper to a remnant piece of plywood my husband had laying around the garage.

While the board and painted clothespins were drying, I used my new scallop punch from Fiskars to punch out some christmasy paper, and printed out the numbers 1-25 in a variety of fonts on white cardstock. I punched the numbers out with my 1.5" circle punch and adhered them to the scalloped circles with my gluestick.

Once the clothespins were dry, I counted out 5 rows of 5 clothespins and spaced them randomly and glued them to my board with Elmer's wood glue.

When the clothespins set up ( overnight), I then used Elmer's to glue my number cut-outs to each clothespin.

And lastly, I filled each little cellophane baggie with two candies ( one for NZ, and one for ME!) to eat each night as we countdown to Christmas morning! I can't wait till we have little ones to share this with!