Advent Calendar

There are so many traditions around this time of year.  Most of them, I truly enjoy!  But the kids LOVE THEM ALL!!!  When I was little, I remember having an advent calendar at home with little ornaments that you velcro’d to the felt tree and by December 25th, that felt tree was decorated from stump to star.

When my sister and I got older, we complained.  “That’s boring!  Our friends get a piece of chocolate in their advent calendar.  Why can’t we have chocolate in our advent calendar?” (There was whining and more whining till my mom gave in.)  We eventually got our chocolate advent calendar.  So spoiled.

For my kids, no, I did not do the chocolate advent calendar (though I am very tempted walking by them at Trader Joes!  Who doesn’t want to be THAT MOM?!!!!).  Back when my kids were in preschool, a friend said she did the Lego Advent Calendar every year with her kiddos.  I looked into Lego but then I, I mean, “Our Elf” came across this “Christmas Chalet” by Playmobil.  The first year, Elfie gave them the empty Chalet and lots of little packages wrapped up to put in the advent calendar.

What advent calendar, you ask?  I found this cute pocket one at Home Goods and up until the Chalet came along, I put 25 days of Christmas activities, one in each pocket.  “Drive around and look at lights” or “Go see the Nutcracker” or “Decorate gingerbread houses” and stuff like that.  We were able to do one thing that related to the holidays each day of the month.

Here’s our original list:

To tell you the truth, that got a little tiring.  The December is busy enough as it is!!! So when Elfie delivered these little packages, they filled about half of the days, and the other half of the December days were filled with the ‘favorite” Christmas activities from that original list.

Now, every year, after Christmas, I quickly stash the accessories into little white bags, tape them with fun Wasabi tape and stick them in storage with the advent calendar and the chalet.  When Christmas boxes come back out again next year, the advent calendar is all ready to be stuffed and hung.

Do you do an advent calendar?  What do you put in your advent calendar?

Happy countdown to Christmas, y’all!

xo, Melissa