Homemade Advent Calendar

Now is the time to start planning homemade advent calendars. Ok it’s a bit early but I am determined not to have a frantic scramble on December the 1st to get one together. This year I wanted a new idea for our Christmas activities. I find Christmas a bit hectic and stressful because I want to do everything. I have so many things I want to do with the children and I always run out of time. This year I am going to plan what we are doing a bit more so I don’t feel stressed and end up packing everything into one day. oh who am I kidding I’m going to do that anyway.

How To Make Homemade Advent Calendar

I wanted to make a homemade advent calendar to contain a list of the activity we will do that day. I also had a lot of packing noodles which came in the boxes which have started to arrive from ebay and amazon. these are those white noodles which stop the items from breaking and I love to use for craft. I knew they would make perfect little snowmen. This is quite a complicated craft for me as it uses so many materials. It is very cute though so it’s worth it.

Materials To Make A Homemade Advent Calendar

For the snowmen

ribbon
sticky bits
white packing noodles
tiny goggly eyes
black craft foam
orange Hama beads
wooden pegs

For the envelopes

small brown envelopes
red and green wash tape
red and green sticky numbers

I wasn’t intending to make these with the twins – I thought it would be way too fiddly, as they are only 3. I was just setting it up to do with Molly who is six. Rose saw what I was making and was desperate to make some too. She loves tiny things and the combination of tiny beads goggly eyes and ribbon got her very excited.

The snowmen for the advent calendar are made with a packing noodle squashed flat. I put a layer of tacky flue on and Rose stuck on a bow, little goggly eyes and an orange Hama bead for the carrot nose. I made the hats from black craft foam cut into shape.

We used alternate green and red bows to make them look very Christmassy. After they had dried I stuck them onto a wooden clothes peg with some sticky bits.

Rose loved them so much she wanted to make her own little snowman family using the other colours for bows. She didn’t want to put hats on them as they are baby snowmen. Then she stuck them in a ice cube tray for a bed and covered them in a cloth so they went to sleep. They were great for a bit of sneaky counting practice too!

Next I made the envelopes. these are simple brown envelopes with a line of Christmas wash tape at the top and bottom. They have a number for each day.