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Homemade Advent Calendar

So this year, as my daughter is almost 3 years old and starting to really "get" Christmas, I wanted to make a fun advent calendar to help us countdown to Christmas Day 2012.  As I was scouring Pinterest for homemade advent calendars, I found a gift wrap idea that I took as inspiration for creating one out of things we already had!

The tubes in the Pin above are a toilet paper tubes transformed into a candy-like fun wrapping idea for a small gift.  I imagined the same tubes holding a small chocolate treat and a advent Scripture reading for each day leading up to Christmas.  So I set about collecting toilet paper tubes and covering with scrapbook paper I had on hand ($15 for a huge book like this one).  I then made a document with cute letters for the 24 days leading up to Christmas to paste to the tubes.  Below is a JPG that you can "right-click-save" to your computer to make your own advent calendar.

I found a fantastic blogger, Kelly at Be A Fun Mum, who had created a day by day reading and activity file for her homemade advent calendar.  Towards the end of her blog post (linked on the picture below), she has a link to her advent calendar PDF.  Click, print, and cut apart each day.  

I then stuffed my tubes with the corresponding cut-out slip and a small chocolate treat wrapped in some tissue paper.  You want the tissue paper to be pretty tight so the treat doesn't fall out of the tube.
My true stroke of genius came when I decided to tie all the tubes to an extra strand of Christmas lights laying around.  I tied them not in numerical order, as I wanted my daughter to practice her numbers and I also didn't want one side to be more empty than the other as we take them off each day. I hung the strand of lights (which I ended up tripling over) on three 3M hooks on the edge of my kitchen bar counter.  But you could hang your advent garland wherever would be cool in your house!

Garland Up Close

From Afar - Pretty Cute, Kinda Rustic!

How do you celebrate the countdown to Christmas?  Do you use an advent calendar?  If so, what is yours like?