Our DIY Advent Calendars

The Christmas decorating and DIYing really started at our house this week.  We even went a little crazy with the outdoor lights.  Although we put our usual Christmas lights up a couple of weeks ago, this past week Hubby, for some reason, decided that we needed more and now nearly every tree and bush in the front yard has some lights on it.  Even the garden shed got it's own set of lights. 

Around here we really love our advent calendars.  It's so fun to see the boys getting excited about Christmas.  I also feel like it's a great way to remember each day why we celebrate Christmas.  Recently, I came across a couple of really cute advent calendars on Pinterest.  I knew when I saw them that they would be perfect to use as numbers for the boys' advent calendar I made last year.  I also ended up making another super simple calendar to use in another part of the house (you'll see it later in this post).  These calendars are so cute that I thought I would share the links with you today.

The art on the calendar* I chose for the boys features various animals and was in the perfect black, white and gold colour scheme.  These images are so lovely that you could just use them as an advent calendar on their own.  If you're interested in making the pocket calendar you can find the DIY here.

*the calendar printables were presented as one picture per day so you'll have to go through each day to print the images.

 I had to include this photo of my youngest just for reference from last year's advent calendar.  He's grown so much and, apparently, I need to buy him some longer pants!

 Because I also ended up finding this calendar*, I decided to make yet another advent calendar.  I made a similar house-shaped holder as the one I use for my desk calendar and simply printed that images from the calendar onto card stock (I used photoshop to resize them).  The printed images are then mounted onto the plywood holder using tape.  I'll have to switch out the calendar page each day which I think will be quite fun since I'll have new art to enjoy right up until Christmas.
*the calendar printables were presented as one picture per day so you'll have to go through each day to print the images.

We're also planning on still using our wooden dowel tree advent so we'll have all sorts of Christmas excitement and anticipation throughout December!