every december, when i was a child, my mother had a simple but beautiful advent calendar. i can’t remember it exactly but i do recall a wood one, where behind each intricate door were nice chocolates that my mother would have picked out. as exciting for her as for my brother and i. mama, please correct me here. either way, each day of december, our little family of four would open the number of the corresponding day and have a treat. simple as that.

jp’s family had a different activity every night for advent. his mother, he recalls, planned items and outings and foods for the whole family to partake in each day leading up to advent. he doesn’t remember the advent calendar.

i’d like a mix of both; simplicity and surprise.

with our little family, each holiday i feel this intense urge to create our own powerdriver traditions. ramona is still young and, essentially, oblivious. but soon she won’t be. and she’ll be excited about the little things our family does each year. so last year i made stockings and this year i made an advent calendar. bc i wanted to take the tradition of my mother’s thoughtful and beautifully made advent calendar and jp’s mother’s tradition of nightly activities based on what was opened each day of advent. ramona won’t care much for the advent calendar i made. at least not this year. and she won’t care much for the activities, except for the hot cocoa. at least not this year. but they’ll be there. the traditions. at least the start of them. and my humble attempts at making our little family our own.

this year i made a simple, modern advent calendar based on the tutorial from weekday carnival. jp helped me diagram the triangles on a piece of wood that we had initially planned to use for our bathroom vanity. i used gold nails, fancy black & white twine, and numbers printed on heavy cardstock. (my strings weren’t all as taut as i would like so, if you try this for yourself, make sure you pull your strings tight and double twist at every nail).

here’s what i have planned for each day of december (written on the back of the respective day) to get in the christmas spirit:

1. decorate house for christmas (it’s small so we only need an hour!
2. watch “a christmas story”
3. make paper snowflakes
4. make popcorn and watch “a charlie brown christmas”
5. buy new toothbrushes for the family!
6. write a christmas wish list and include non-tangible things
7. read the birth of Christ in the gospels
8. spend special family time with the farm yard animals
9. have a candlelit dinner
10. hang mistletoe
11. have a sweet treat for breakfast
12. make pepperkakor cookies
13. declutter for christmas (boxes of vintage stuff, mo’s toys. basement)
14. make an egg nog cocktail. egg nog for the little ones.
15. go on morning winter hike
16. go for a drive to see christmas lights
17. drink hot cocoa while watching yet another christmas movie
18. enjoy hot cocoa for breakfast
19. go thru and read winter and christmas books
20. bake some more christmas treats
21. put coins in strangers’ meters
22. determine new years resolutions
23. have a sweet treat for breakfast
24. take a photo w santa

here are other posts i used that have additional festive ideas for how to celebrate the days leading up to the 25th.

• playful learning
• oh the lovely things

need ideas for christmas gifts? don’t forget about my giveaway from artifact uprising. leave a comment on this post to be entered to win.