Easy Advent Calendar

Just because I will KISS Christmas....I'm not the Grinch.  I still want to make fun MEMORIES with my family.  So, I took ideas from different people, added some of my own and came up with this REALLY easy Advent Calendar. *THE BONUS IS YOU CAN USE THE BOARD YEAR ROUND...THINK ART WORK DISPLAY!

First I made a list of all my activities (in order so they fit on days we already had things planned):

Decorate our Christmas Tree
Make paper snowflakes and decorate our front window
Buy a toy for a child in need
Visit Santa at the Children’s Museum
Make fancy hot chocolate
Watch a Christmas movie together
Write a letter to Santa
Turn on Christmas music and dance
Make a Christmas ornament for our tree
Take a drive and look at Christmas lights
Make a present for Nana and PapaGo ice skating
Snuggle up and read Christmas stories 
Attend the Christmas Musical at Church
Christmas stories
Make a Gingerbread house
Buy food to donate to a food bank
Make Santa bubble beards in the bath
Go Sledding
Make Christmas cookies
Color Christmas pictures
Build a snowman
Make Reindeer food for Rudolf
Enjoy Christmas Eve Service at Church
Read the Story of Jesus' Birth

Then I printed them out all nice and pretty like on Cardstock (oh my goodness, what teacher doesn't love cardstock).

Next, I cut them out to look like cute little tags.

Because I intend to keep these for a few years, I wanted to make these decently cute.  So I took scrapbook paper and cut out random little shapes (I'm sure you can come up with something WAY better).

*I DID NOT PUT NUMBERS ON THE CARDS SO I COULD RE-USE THEM NEXT YEAR (certain activities won't fall on the same dates from year to year)

An old dry-erase board I had got a couple coats of chalkboard paint and I wrote the numbers on the board.  Then I put magnetic strips on the back of tiny clothespins but you can pretty much do whatever you want with them (make them magnets for the fridge, hang them across your mantle, just put them in a jar and pull them out, etc.)

Finally, I hung the little tags from the clothespins and VIOLA! You have a simple, cute advent calendar.

At the end of the day, how it looks doesn't really matter.  The most important thing is the memories you will be making as a family!

*CHECK BACK TOMORROW FOR SOME REALLY FUN ALTERNATIVE IDEAS TO THE TRADITIONAL ACTIVITIES ON THIS LIST!