Homemade Avent Calendar

While looking through my photos for my photo canvas, I came across the avent calendar that kara and I made last year.  Since Dec has just started,  there is still time to make one for this year.   

We painted toilet paper tubes in green, red and white.  What I like about this craft is you can change it to whatever colors match your decor.   Staple the bottom of the tubes. so that they form little pouches.  If you do not have 24 tubes all at the same time (few of us do, unless we are saving them for something)  you could always use 12 and put numbers 1-12 on one side, and 12-24 on the other and reuse them.  Draw on numbers  or use stickers to mark each of the days of the month.

We hung the tubes on our glass door.   I have seen the same calendar where  mini clips clipped the tubes to a ribbon or string.  That way would work very well, we just did not have a good place to hang them.  I do recommend that if you use tape like we did, to use STRONG tape. We first hung them up with scotch tape, and once the candy was added. the weight of the tubes caused  some of them to falll off the door.  Once I used packing tape, they stayed up much better. 

I allowed Kara to fill the tubes, she used candy canes, candy kisses and some of her Halloween candy.   Each day, as we counted down, she ate the candy in that days's tube. 

This was a fun craft to do with the kids.  You can make it fancier, or just basic like ours.  Either way, it is a fun way to countdown the days to Christmas.