Advent Ideas

We have a few advent traditions at our house, and it seems to be growing each year.

A few years ago we did these candy ribbons.  There is a cute poem attached to the

ribbons, along with 24 candy kisses (we used 2-sided foam tape to attach the kisses).  A large jingle bell is attached to the bottom.  And there is a binder clip at the top for hanging.  The poem goes like this:  December 1st till Chirstmas is the longest time of year.  Seems as though this special day never will appear.  How many days till Christmas?  It's mighty hard to count.  So this little candy ribbon will tell you the amount.  Remove a Kiss every night, before your bedtime prayer.  And you will reach the bell when Christmas Eve is there.

This year we decided to make some alterations from the the candy ribbon countdown - and now we have Candy Countdown Jars! 

I adjusted a couple of words in the poem and printed them up in a cute circle booklet to attach to the top of the of the jar. I used half-pint mason jars (perfect for holding 24 candy kisses). But you could use any jar you have on hand.  We wanted to give some of these as gifts.  And in some cases we decided to use a larger jar to give just one per family, but still have enough kisses in it for each of the kids to have one a night.  I was able to fit 3 sets of 24 kisses into a wide-mouth pint size jar, and we plan to use a quart size jar for a family with 4 children.  I bet a peanut butter jar would work great, too.  We originally made our booklet with the poem on top and the snowman on bottom, but then we decided it looked better to have the snowman on top (like the first picture of the jars).  Then we just used some scrap Christmas fabric to tie on to the jars for extra decoration.  I think they turned out pretty cute!

Click here for free download.

Here's some pictures of the kids hard a work today making these advent gifts for others.  What a great way to blow off some schoolwork - making gifts for others!

 And here's the fruits of our labor.  They didn't even complain about not eating any kisses themselves!  So I had to reward them by making Peanut Butter Blossoms.  I couldn't resist...the recipe was on every bag of kisses!

Here's one I made with a girlfriend last year.  It was fun to do together and share ideas and resources! 

It is made from wedding favor tins (that I found at Micheal's Craft Store), scrapbook paper, number stickers, circle magnets, and some creative ideas.  The favor tins come with a clear plastic cover that can pop out.  Use this to trace out circles on Christmas scrapbook paper.  Add sticker numbers.  I added a dot of glue to the clear plastic lid and placed it back on top of my numbered paper circle, then I popped it back into the cover.  We hot glued magnets to the back of the tins so we could display them on the fridge in a cute shape like the Christmas tree shape here.  We filled the tins with different activities to do throughout the advent season.  Some of my ideas were: reading a favorite Christmas book together, Christmas movie and popcorn night, adding decorations to the Christmas tree, a Christmas craft, ice skating, etc.  Sometimes if I new we already had a very full day ahead of us, I would just put in a small treat for each of them. 

I hope this helps spur on some advent ideas for you!

I don't remember where I found these ideas, so I apologize for not giving credit where credit is due.  But I do not claim any of this as my original ideas (other than the alterations of the candy ribbon to the candy jars)