Our advent calendar: a simple and beautiful tradition. And many other options.

We started our advent calendar tradition long ago, but it has changed along the way to meet our family the way it really is. I love advent calendars for many reasons. For starters it can be easily tailored to the family it is created for, and as I strongly believe all families are different, I think this is great. The rhythms and traditions of a family can help bring a closeness and distinct feeling of belonging that most people crave. And it is pretty easy to make one, with almost a month to enjoy it.

There are many great ideas out there for advent calendars. Pinterest is a great resource. Listed below are just a few ideas that could be considered if my how-to is not right for your family:

* Brown paper bags filled with items of choice (see included list.)
* Ikea sandwich/lolly bags filled with items of choice.
* Matchboxes glued together to make a 5 x 5 array.
* 25 Christmas books/DVDs wrapped up, to be unwrapped one a day.
* 25 small fabric bags containing decorations to place on the tree, one every day.
* Kmart brand 'take one peg off per day' calendar.
* Coles (and many other sellers!) little drawer advent calendar.
* IKEA small gift bag advent calendar (even the number stickers are included!)

Filling your advent calendar

I try to fill our advent calendar with useful items. I don't do food items after the December of a few years ago. My children only get to have lollies at birthday parties and on other special occasions, due to the reactions some of them have to certain food ingredients. Let's just say that we survived the food-included advent calendar. Just. So if your children can tolerate lollies these would be another choice. With ideas drawn from the internet, friends and just wandering around the stores, I have included below items for young children through to a few teen ideas:

* Decorations for the tree
* Lip balm
* Play doh
* Special hair things
* Socks
* Postage stamps
* Special writing paper
* Lego mini figure
* Character cup
* Tennis ball/other ball
* Fabric or other small sewing items
* Multicolour pen
* Glitter glue
* Masking tape, sticky tape or washi tape
* Tiny book
* Farm animals
* Crayons, pencils, textas (small packets are available and great for taking to all the Christmas-time events)
* Small notepad or post-its
* Small cross stitch
* Tiny doll (like Lalaloopsy)
* iTunes gift card
* Handmade voucher for free app down load for iPod
* Nail polish or other make up
* Character underwear
* Paper muffin cups or cookie cutter with the promise to make something with mum/dad
* Card games
* Torch
* Small figurine
* Coloured envelopes
* Matchbox car/plane/motorbike
* Road/train-track tape
* Sketching pencils
* Chalk
* Dummies
* Character/light-up/makes-sound toothbrush
* New case for Dsi or Dsi games (look at specials- I found one for $2 at Target!)
* Small make-up case
* Pencil case for the next school year
* Craft punch (from scrapbooking sections of stores)
* Googly eyes
* Pom pom maker

Each of my children has 5 gifts to unwrap as part of our advent calendar this year. The items are pictured below in reverse age order, which is the order of our calendar so that Isabel gets to open hers on her birthday. I picked up the items as part of regular shopping and didn't really plan exactly what I was going to buy. If I have to sit down and plan everything, it just wouldn't happen.

Making our Advent Calendar

I use brown paper all the time now because I bought a massive roll of it two years ago. I love it. I could have decorated it, stamped the numbers rather than writing on with gifts with a red sharpie, or any number of more fancy ideas, but truthfully, I just don't want to devote that kind of time to it. Fast and simple are much more my speed!

I normally start by laying out the gifts in a grid so I can see what it will look like, and gather all my supplies in the downstairs playroom. It looks something like this when I'm set up.

I then use spare minutes here and there to get the gifts wrapped, still keeping them in the grid.

I write on numbers next, in the same way, a few at a time, in odd moments like waiting for a load of washing to finish or the kids to put shoes on. I usually add glitter glue over the top of the numbers at this point, but with the kids home sick I couldn't 'borrow' any with them all around. No glitter glue this year. The key with the entire process is to deliberately make it all different. Different numbers, wrap not-quite-neatly, and tie the string in random order, varying the amount of times. Perfect is just too hard, and I would end up not finishing because it would take too much time. Near enough is definitely good enough with an advent calendar. Tinsel covers any bits that don't look right;)

The next step is when I get to be a tiny bit creative in that I get to decorate the gifts any way I want. In the past I've used wool, twine, etc to tie around the gifts (or brown paper bags before I had the paper.) This year I bought some bakers twine in red, red/white, blue and blue/white, so I used this. I wrapped it around a few times and tied it to the back. I have on occasion tied the string to the front.

Next I put the twine across the window. We always use the same window. It has the worst view in the whole house so I don't care that it is covered with the advent calendar. My original roll of twine was much nicer, but it disappeared so I had to buy a new roll.

This is when I bundle up the gifts and bring them upstairs to hang. I tied them to the string line with ribbon as I had a huge roll. I will keep these ribbons for future years. In the past I used twine or decorated pegs, which looked good too. I add decorations to the front of the gifts to be put on the tree before opening the gift. We have always done this and it is one of the kids favourite parts of the advent calendar. Having six other people watch you place a decoration on the tree is important to them and they all choose a place carefully each time.

This is it before the tinsel:

And this is the finished result!

This is what our advent calendar looked like last year:

It would be great if you could add your own ideas for advent calendar fillings in the comments section to help others still looking for ideas. Have fun making yours!

Jen.x