It's that time of year, the wonderful time where even though work can't be more stressful, you seem to be full of cheer at the smell of fresh pine and home made goods. 

The Holidays.

There's something comforting about counting down to an event. I am the master of paper chains. I've had to severly limit my chain making now that I'm considered an "adult". 

So, the holidays present me with the second best alternative - the Advent Calendar.

We have the premade kind, you know, the ones we all grew up with but the chocolate tastes like metal? Yeah. That one. I decided that wasn't enough, that I wanted a reason to look forward to each day before Christmas. I wanted to do something memorable, something that could be the focal point of our days and bring me and the fiancé closer together. So I decided to do something about it.

And thus was born the couple's activity advent calendar. 

Here's what you'll need:

Scrapbook Paper

Numbers (I had paper ones, came in the most amazing scrapbook paper package)

Tape

Cutter

Candy

Clothes Pins

Twine

Paper Lunch Sacks

Ribbon

To start, decide what activities you want in your advent calendar. Here's a few ideas from mine:

Bake (there's a plethora of these in mine)

Watch someone's favorite holiday movie/cartoon

Go see lights

Hot Chocolate Night

Send holiday cards

Geocache (we love this)

Play a holiday game

Bake Santa Cookies

Buy Snowballs (or if you live in a cold climate - get yours free!)

Once you have your supplies and ideas - begin construction. I used medium size clothes pins, so I trimmed about 4 inches off the top of the bags. From here, I took my numbers, framed them, and placed them on the front. 

I then wrote all of my daily activities of scrapbook paper and placed one in each corresponding bag with two pieces of candy (one for me, one for him) and folded it over and sealed with ribbon.

Once I had all of these prepared, I took two pieces of twine, about 10 foot each, and placed them on the wall. I used thumbtacks and tied it around before putting in the wall.

I then used the clothes pins and put each one on the twine. I had days 1-12 on the top row, and 13-25 on the bottom. I rounded it all out with a Merry Christmas sign in the top center.

 Ta-Da!

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, etc :)

Happy Holidays!

xoxo

Meagan