Advent Calendar

Last year when O was 1 1/2, it occurred to me sometime after Thanksgiving that it would be nice to have an Advent calendar but I wanted one like the one I grew up with . . . you know the kind that's handmade out of felt with pockets and trinkets and neat things like that. I immediately contacted my  mom to find out if she still had our old one but she looked and couldn't find it anywhere. I realized there wasn't enough time to get anything of quality done in time for December 1 so I threw in the towel and promised myself I'd do it right this year.

Then the thought completely fell out of my head . . .

Thankfully sometime early this fall it hit me again and this time I had plenty of time to research and do it right. I did lots of digging around online to find just the look I wanted to recreate. I discovered blogger Shannon and her lovely advent calendar but I wanted to do things a little differently. I did a whole lot of brainstorming on how I wanted to do mine and I devised a plan, bought the materials and got organized.

Then it all fell out of my head again . . .

This brings me to mid-November when it hit me I had abandoned my project and needed to get back on it before the end of the month. I guess it was a good thing though because in the meantime, I saw another tree in the Pottery Barn catalog that I really liked so I changed the shape of my tree. In the end, I created a 5'8" by 3' advent calendar to hang in our hallway and the best part is that O loves it.

 









Tucked into each pocket is a story either from the Bible or about the scene and how it relates to the holiday season. The back sides are plain white because the white felt I used for the ornaments is a little bit transparent and I didn't want words to show through.

I had a lot of fun researching the roots of each of these scenes and learned a whole lot about how many of the Christian traditions actually have pagan roots. Interesting stuff!

The best part is that I'm finished though. It's 12:05am on December 1 and the Advent calendar is really truly completely finished so when O gets up in the morning, we'll turn over that very first ornament and read the story inside.