Christmas Advent Calendar

One year my (well intentioned) husband brought home one of those advent calendars where you open a little cardboard window or door and get a little chocolate. There was only one chocolate per day and well, I have four kids. The older ones would be pretty good about waiting a few days to get another turn but it was a fit fest for the younger ones. I banished candy advent calendars after that. Until now….. I was contacted by a company called Paper Mart about a possible holiday collaboration. I went to check out their site and was sucked into a vortex of cute packaging. Boxes, bags, ribbon, tins, jars, and more!!! When I finally pulled myself away from their site, I responded that I could easily think of some fun things to do for Christmas.

When I saw the fabric and burlap bags I KNEW what I could do. Those little bags could hold candy. FOUR pieces of candy :) No more fighting over turns. I chose these 4″ burlap bags because I knew I could fit 24 of that size on my chalkboard. They have a ton of different fabrics and different sizes.

I was going to use my sheet of numbers stencil I bought but I couldn’t find it so I cut some numbers out of vinyl instead. Either a store bought stencil or cutting out your own will do just fine. I used a foam brush and dabbed on the black craft paint.

You don’t have to wait for it to dry, just peel it off.

I put them on my chalkboard but if you don’t have a chalkboard you could just hang them on a wall or get a piece of thin (1/8″) plywood and paint it with chalkboard paint. The plywood could be propped up against a wall or you could hang it.

I strung it up using this cute buffalo check ribbon and some mini clothespins. I filled them with mini candy canes and we will open them every day after dinner starting December 1st.