DIY Advent Calendar

Tree Advent Calendar: IKEA hack, inexpensive cardboard advent calendar that's been silver leafed, and filled with printable activities.

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• Silver Leaf
• Materials:
• How To Make A Tree Advent Calendar

This tree advent wreath is a fun project to take an inexpensive paper advent calendar up a notch with beautiful silver leaf. 

I really liked a mirrored advent calendar I saw out shopping on day, with all the cute little doors, and the sparkly, shiny mirror. I didn't really like the price.  So, when I saw this cardboard version at IKEA this Christmas for only $10 I had an idea.

Silver Leaf

I had some left over from another project so I broke it out again. And again I fell in love with it...this might be the beginning of a silver leafed Christmas.  And of course you could use gold leaf if you're more of a gold person. 

Materials:

• cardboard advent calendar
• silver leaf
• adhesive for silver leaf
• number stickers

How To Make A Tree Advent Calendar

1.The silver leaf is really easy to apply. Just follow the directions.  For mine, I applied the adhesive with a paint brush, working in sections.  It has to sit for 15 minutes, then you apply the silver leaf.

I removed the individual boxes and did the front section of each one.

2. After the silver leaf added everywhere, I used scrapbook stickers from the dollar store for the numbers.

You can see a little bit of the green base in some sections, if I had to do it again, I might spray the whole thing gold before I started so that it was in the little spots showing through.

It only took about an hour or so to do all the silver leaf. 

We started the tradition a few years ago of doing an activity advent calendar together as a family. It's a great way to make sure that the busyness of the holiday season doesn't take over and prevent us from doing all those fun memory making activities we all want to do, but might not get around to without a plan.

It's also a way to emphasise that doing things together is more important than just buying more and more stuff.

I've made over 60 suggested activity cards available in three different patterns.  You can purchase and download them here  and then print them at home and add them to your calendar.

Some of them are simple, and others are more elaborate.

My big tip if you're putting one of these calendars together for your family is to do it with a little calendar print out beside you. Because the holidays are so busy, we don't need to make more work for ourselves, so I try to include lots of things we'd be doing already. You're likely going to decorate a tree this year, and give your kids a bath whether you do an activity calendar or not. Schedule a bubble bath with holiday music for their regular bath night, and schedule tree decorating for when you're doing it anyway.

Then, fill in with some of the other activities that catch your eye, and might help you be a little more intentional about making some memories this year, like a picnic under the Christmas tree.

Make sure that busy nights have easy activities and save the big projects for when you have more time, like on the weekend.

Along with the activities you might choose a few little treats for some days. Or, if the activities don't fit your family, you could simplify it with just treats. What ever works best for you.

This year, I tied up the activities as little scrolls and added some treats for certain days.

With a pretty DIY advent calendar like this, life really is a party!

You might also like our Children's Story Book Advent Calendar here.

Also check out our Activity Advent Calendar here.

You might also enjoy our House Advent Calendar here.