I think it’s been established that I love the holidays.  (Seen my Instagram lately?) So, I guess it comes as no surprise that I like counting down to Christmas. My favorite way to do that? An advent calendar, of course. Last year I got tired of buying the flimsy cardboard ones, so I made my own. This was pre-blogging, so there aren’t many pics, but I’ll try my best to explain the embarrasingly simple process. I bet you could about figure it out by looking at it. Check it:

Yep, just a 2×6, some spray painted clothespins, and labeled manila tags. I told you it was simple. After spraying the wood white, 24 of the pins red and 1 yellow (I took them apart before spraying because I wanted the spring part to stay metallic color), I hot glued on the clothespins. I eyed the spacing, and let the length of my scrap wood dictate how far apart they went.

I painted on the header by following a print out I made and glued on some tiny pinecones I had. Then, I printed out the back page of the advent calendar  featured here (the printable doesn’t seem to be available anymore! bah! Any clip art, or even hand drawings would work, though.) and cut out the shapes. Those got glued to the back of manila tags I had left over from wedding crafts, and then each got numbered. The big day got a big tag for good measure.

The tags get hung up in random order so that every day Mike and I can play the advent game. We both stand with our backs to the calendar, count to three and turn around. The first one to find the tag with the date on it gets to peek at the little drawing first. We always make a big deal of how cool the one we got is, making the other person totally jealous, haha. It’s fun, I swear!

So, have you made an advent calendar?