Earnest Parenting.com logo

Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

Christmastime brings joy to everyone, but perhaps the ones that are affected by the Christmas spirit the most are the kids. They count the days to the great event – the arriving of Santa Claus. For that, they take the help of the advent calendar, which in most cases is filled with sweets and the kid is allowed to open only one sweet delight per day.

Do you remember how anxiously you were waiting for the next day to come so that you can open the next segment of the calendar and see what is hidden there? If you want your kids to experience the same joyful anticipation and relish the emotion and memories for years to come, you can make their advent calendars unique by not buying them readymade ones from the market, but making them yourself. They will surely remember the beautiful handmade calendars a lot longer, especially if you fill them with various sweat treats that they adore.

My first tip in that regard is – find out what your kid loves most and add only their favorite types of sweets to the calendar, as otherwise they might feel disappointed rather that happily surprised. Here are a few ideas that can help you make beautiful handmade advent calendars for your kids.

The decorated house
This is a popular theme and it is not too hard to make. Use cardboard and paper to make a big house with many ‘rooms’. Remember, you must have a ‘room’ for every day till Christmas. Put a chocolate, a cookie, a decorated gingerbread figure or whatever your kid likes in each ‘room’ and seal it with colorful paper. You can glue paper numbers and cutouts in festive shapes (bells, Christmas trees, snowflakes, stars, reindeers, etc.) on each paper piece. You can also wrap the whole house with tinsel or decorate it with fresh pine branches or pinecones. Sprinkle some glitter or snow spray on the roof and place the advent calendar somewhere, where everyone can admire it.

The Christmas tree
You can make a big Christmas tree out or cardboard or wire and dye it green or silver. Wrap each treat in foil or wrapping paper and glue a number on each piece and hang the pieces from the tree with the help of pieces of wire or ornament hooks. With each passing day, the number of ‘ornaments’ will decrease, but your kid’s anticipation and joy won’t!

The wall display
If you want something more unconventional and have enough free space on a wall in your living room, you can make an advent calendar in the form of a wall display. What you’ll need is colorful paper or different fabrics and a few nails. If you use paper, make multiple envelopes or paper bags in various sizes, but each big enough to hold the sweet treat you will put in it. If you choose to use fabrics, you can sew small bags with a thread at the top that can be sealed. Fill the envelopes/bags with sweets and hook them to the nails you have driven into the wall. Arrange them in a nice shape – like a Christmas tree or a big present or a star, a snowflake. If, alternatively, you don’t want to make holes on the wall, you can arrange the display on a pin wall with pins.

These ideas for a homemade advent calendar will surely surprise your kids and might even make their friends envy their thoughtful mom and dad. Try one of these out and bring joy to your sunshine’s face.

Dobrin Georgiev wearing hard hat and holding plans at construction siteAuthor bio: Dobrin Georgiev is an young architect with 9 years in the construction field. He is constantly challenging himself with the newest in his field of expertise. Since several years he has dedicated some of his time writing articles and giving professional advice to people about various topics – parenting, home improvement, personal finance, travel and others. Currently he is a contributing pieces to the Scandinavian “Femina pakkekalender” campaign.

Earnest Parenting: help for parents who want to celebrate the excitement of counting down until Jesus’ birthday.