Our homemade advent calendar

This post is a bit of a case of better late than never, but after I posted my 25 favourite homemade advent calendar ideas a couple of weeks ago, I could hardly fail to show you my own attempt, could I?

I used my Cricut mini (my electronic cutting machine) to cut out the advent numbers, and tied a loop (made from some baker’s twine I had left over from last year’s Christmas stash) to each number. 24 wooden pegs were given a quick update with red and white striped washi tape, and then I added a blob of blue tack to the back of each peg, ready for attaching them to the wall.

I wanted some little envelopes, and these ones from Pipii were perfect. I cut out 24 simple tag shapes, wrote a different advent activity on each and slotted them into the envelopes. At the last minute I also added a marble for each of the twins to each envelope, so that they can collect these over advent until Christmas Day when we’ll give them a cute wooden marble run we picked up on eBay.

I popped one envelope on each peg, hooked the corresponding number over the top of the peg, and stuck the pegs to the wall in a tree arrangement (it took a bit of tweaking to get the tree looking just right) on the landing at the top of our stairs.

I love that the calendar adds a decorative element to an otherwise plain wall (I have plans for this wall in 2014), it’s been a hit with the twins, and I’ll definitely be packing this carefully away at the end of the holidays ready to bring out again next year.