DIY Polar Advent Calendar

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The craziness of the season sometimes creeps up on us, and honestly we can feel our anxiety rise. Bake the cookies. Buy the gifts. Don’t just buy the gifts – find a good sale on the perfect gifts. Oh, and don’t buy every gift…make DIY homemade gifts. Host a holiday party. Mark the calendar for Christmas Pageants and office holiday parties, too. It’s all very magical, and we absolutely love it. But, wow, it’s exhausting.

Now that we are in Christmas mode, it’s only fitting that we kick it off with our official Advent calendar. Since Jessica is late with almost everything she ever does (and goes), it’s even more fitting this Advent Calendar comes on Dec. 4, 4 days after Advent officially started. Better late than ever. You still have time – make it this year, or pin it for next year.

We made a fun DIY Advent Calendar last year. This year, we shopped Oriental Trading {where the options are endless} and went with a snowy, polar scene topped off with our kid’s favorite toys – animals. Not just any animals, but animals with mini Santa hats. Ho Ho Ho.

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Materials:

Directions:

Step 1: Set the scene with snowflakes. Hang the snowflakes above the winter advent calendar with fishing wire or twine, and tape.

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Step 2: Use a hot glue gun to glue the cute Oriental Trading mini Santa hats to the toy polar animals.

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Step 3: Fold the cardboard boxes.

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Step 4: Glue, stick or pin the numbers to the front of the boxes.

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Step 5: Fill the boxes with goodies such as candy, and mini toys, or make it all about acts of kindness, a family activity or helping others.

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Step 6: Stack the boxes so the numbers make sense, and it looks good visually to the eye. Then, place the animals randomly.

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Step 7: Watch the kids open the mini boxes everyday with pure joy.

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Oriental Trading sent us some items of our choosing for this post, free of charge. We’re so happy they did! All opinions are honest, and our own. No other type of compensation was received. Thanks for supporting the companies that support j. sorelle. We love Oriental Trading, even before this post.

 

DIY Advent Calendar

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The thought of the upcoming holidays brings us a sense of panic with all there is to do, but also great joy. It’s our favorite time of year, so bring on the cheer. We’ve been known to not put up our Advent calendar until mid-December, which may or may not defeat the purpose, so this post is our attempt to have our DIY Advent calendar up by December 1. Other than our usual tardiness, the other con to our past Advent calendar was the size…how are we supposed to fit one thing larger than a candy cane in each tiny opening? This year, we went long and tall, and got creative with ice cream pint containers!

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May we just say that had we known blogging would have been in our future, we would have an all-white wall with light floors. Since that’s not feasible with any of our homes, and we needed a well-lit area to show you our Advent Calendar, a ‘rustic Colorado ‘ rock wall was our second best option. Our 5-year-old model had a ‘make-it-work’ moment, which she didn’t seem to mind.

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You’ll Need:

Directions:

Make or print number labels. You can use a Silhouette like we did, or buy number stickers. For number 25, we used a red star ornament since that’s the magical day. Glue the labels on the container lids.

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Drill the pint containers to the long piece of wood {totally doable, even with do drill experience}, and then fill the pint containers with goodies.

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Place lids on the pint containers.

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Set up the colorful Advent calendar. You can make it a horizontal Advent calendar, or a vertical one like we did. Because ours is vertical and tall, we couldn’t resist a set up with a ladder – it makes for a fun adventure everyday for the kids and with a good lean, no nails or holes in the wall.

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diy-advent-calendar-red-green-christmas-girl-ladder-holiday

Someone special wants it to be Christmas now.

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We teamed up with Sillhouette America to give away 1 Silhouette CAMEO on Instagram. Nov. 25 the giveaway ends, and all you have to do is follow us on Instagram and tag 3 friends. Go here now.

#colorize #silhouetterocks #adventcalendar