Thanks to Pinterest and a crafty wife/mommy I follow on Instagram i got really inspired to make a DIY Advent Calendar for this holiday season. Back home we always had a Mickey Mouse Advent Calendar that we used to hang close to the christmas tree and every day Mickey would get closer and closer to Christmas Day. Even though my brother and i grew up, we still put that calendar up every year.
Since moving to Okinawa three months ago we didn’t have anything to call “our own”, yet. Now its time for my husband and I to start making our traditions. I decided to create an Advent Calendar from scratch. I made all the envelopes myself, thanks to the internet for showing me the way. Now this calendar is somewhat unique because it’ll enclose love letters between Him and I. Since we’re somewhat tight with money, because we had to buy expensive plane tickets to fly back home for our February Wedding, we decided that love notes would be great christmas presents to give each other.
All you need is:
– Brown Wrapping Paper
– Ruler
– Scissors
– Glue
(i used left over Glittering Glue from my Halloween Red Slipper DIY)
– Hole Puncher
(to make your life easier, i used the scissors)
– Ribbon
– Sharpie
– Glitter
(i ended up not using it but you can go crazy with glitter to make it extra cute)
(Note: i made all the envelopes myself because we have limited resources here, but you can easily find envelopes anywhere)
First i used the measurements i found online (here) to make one envelope, which i would later use to trace the shape on the brown wrapping paper as a way to help me from making a mess and doing all of them one by one.
After tracing all 25 of them, you just cut them out, glue the sides together and the bottom flap. Then you make a hole on the upper flap, draw the numbers with a Sharpie, cut some ribbon and tie it to a large piece of ribbon that will hold all the envelopes (i used a different type of ribbon to make the small pieces pop).
It’s real easy but after a while you get tired, so feel free to take a break and return to the envelopes later. It took me the whole day to finish them all.
I taped it to our wall because i really didn’t have any choice, but you can definitely hang it in a prettier way!
We also finally added our “Charlie Brown Christmas Tree” 🙂
You can add a Candy Cane to mark the day 🙂 and to make it even cuter you can add some string of lights to make it really pop! I would’ve love to add some lights but sadly all the lights here are sold-out… Too many American people living here.. not so many items at the Exchange… So i guess it’ll have to stay like that :(.
Happy Holidays to all my lovely readers!
xoxo
ps. i know this post is late but i was having problems uploading some of my pictures..
pss. this is my first post with high quality pictures 🙂 enjoy!