Our Advent Calendar

One of the Christmas traditions we want to share with our children is an Advent Calendar. We looked at several but didn't find any that were quite right: attractive, inexpensive, and Christ-centered. Finally, we decided to just create our own.  We liked the idea of a Jesse Tree so we started with our favorite children's bible. 

Husbandie, who is uber talented, scanned a picture from the first 24 stories (Old Testment and Jesus's birth & baptisim) and created a sheet of "ornaments".

*UPDATE* A reader kindly pointed out that we skipped one of the stories, "The Girl Know One Wanted" and instead included two ornaments for "A New Beginning". The mistake has been corrected we have also added numbers to make using the ornaments easier.

We have also added a second option. Our family starts with the story The Beginning a Perfect Home and ends with Heaven Breaks Through. We do this because while the The Story and The Song is beautifully written it is an introduction to the book and not specifically based on scripture. We also like that our advent doesn't end with a baby but the reason for why Christ came. We feel that ending with Heaven Breaks Through emphasis that he is Immanuel - God with us! We also like ending on the words "The great rescue has begun." We, however,  understand and respect that some families may want to do it differently and so we've added a second option and you can now print ornaments starting with The Story and The Song and ending with The King of all Kings.

click here for the ornament pdf

We then adhered the ornaments to a magnetic sheet and cut them out. Husbandie designed them to fit perfectly in the bottom of a mini cupcake pan.

muffin tin via wal-mart ($4.50)

We wanted the tree to be close in size to the calendar, a cookie sheet was a perfect solution. 

$ 4 dollar cookie sheet via wal-mart and
sally hansen nail art pen

i love watching him draw, #hotness

finished tree and ornaments 
*i painted over the tree with mod podge to provide a protective layer*

Now for my favorite part, making the actual calendar.  

our supplies: scrapbook paper ( cut in to 24, 2.25" squares),
scrapbook embellishments, self adhesive magnetic paper,
glue ( i used mod podge), and a good pen
*i bought all our supplies at michaels using 40-50% off coupons - 
the total came in around $9* 

The design options are limitless. The only suggestion I have is to start with three coordinating papers, this keeps things visual interesting and cohesive at the same time.  Other than that, just have fun. We were blessed with two new nieces this year so we made each of their families a calendar.  

our iowa neices' calendar 

our indiana niece's calendar
*for the third paper & flowers i used an old hymnal*

our family's calendar
*i made this for our family last year*

We are super excited to begin the Chrismas season at our house. I'll be sharing more of our traditions in the weeks to come and I'd love to hear about yours.