Activity Advent Calendar

One of the more important things I learned as an education major was how to beg, borrow, and steal. Why reinvent the wheel when there are so many great ideas out there? Thanks to Pinterest, it's become even easier to do just that.

So our advent calendar this year is simply a Pinterest knock off, but I'm still excited about it and thought I'd share. It is December 1 after all, so the countdown does begin today...

I pinned this calendar and this one for inspiration, and I was going to make a super cute pocket calendar out of scrapbook paper. I even created the base for it and figured out pocket measurements and everything. But then I remembered that, hey, I have no free time whatsoever and what was I thinking making all that extra work for myself. So I bought a $2.50 felt pocket calendar in the dollar section at Target. It's a piece of crap, but it's a piece of crap that took me all of 5 minutes to buy.

My friend April made her own fancy shmancy calendar, and it. is. awesome. You should definitely check out her tutorial for some advent awesomeness.

The point of the activity advent is that you focus on creating memories each day of December instead of getting a cheap little gift that will eventually end up in the trash. 

We came up with 24 activities, printed them out, and stuck them in each pocket. Easy breezy! The hardest part was coming up with activities, so I'm listing the ones we picked in case you need some future inspiration. Or something like that. We coordinated with our calendars to make sure everything would actually be do-able on the date we chose, and a lot of the activities we picked were things that were already on the calendar (i.e. visiting Santa, Christmas concert, etc.). And I didn't include things like reading the Christmas story and a few other traditions that are already a given. We'll do those things throughout the season anyway.

So without further ado, here's our list for this year...

Decorate the tree for your room

Make a Paper Chain

Decorate the Christmas tree

Watch a Christmas movie in PJs with popcorn

Go to Christmas light-up parade

Color a Christmas picture

Make Christmas cookies

Go to the choir Christmas concert

Make a special gift for Daddy

Visit Santa

Open a new Christmas book

Buy a gift for the Angel Tree

Make Christmas cards

Make paper snowflakes

Sing carols at the piano

Go out for a Christmas treat

Go to the Arboretum

Drink hot chocolate in front of the fire

Make peppermint fudge

Deliver Christmas gifts to neighbors

Decorate Christmas cookies

Look at Christmas lights

Wrap Christmas presents

Open new Christmas PJs

Merry Christmas!!