Advent Calendars

[ValiumQueen]

Yes I know it is only August, but with three young children I need to be prepared for December.

I have an Advent Calendar with little drawers in (home made) and put things in for each day - activities, coins and/or sweets.

I have seen some wonderful suggestions on other threads, but thought it might be helpful to have a dedicated thread for this.

Two things I have learned is to 1) put activities in the night before, not all at the beginning, as they are very much dependent on weather, time available, energy levels etc, and 2) do not put sweets in until the night before otherwise they disappear

[iloveholidays]

also looking for cheap Christmas related gifts to put in the advent calendar. Thanks

[craftynclothy]

I'm making my own this year too. Am planning on filling money envelopes with bits. I'm doing individual calendars for all 4 of us.

So far I've bought lots of little bits for the kids from here and Avon perfumes samples from Ebay for myself & Dh.

I'm also planning on getting a tin of celebrations or heroes to add a chocolate to each envelope too Dh can have all the bounty

[iloveholidays]

I thought about doing that. I was looking at little red and white sweet bags on ebay to fill. what are you planning to do with your envelopes? hang up or just put in a bucket? I was looking at perfume samples as well for dp

[craftynclothy]

ilove Hard to describe but I sew/quilt so I'm planning on making 4 biggish squares/rectangles with a name at the top of each. The idea is the bottom 3 will have loops on to hang on buttons from the one above and the top one will go on a hanger. I'm thinking of running 4 strands of ribbon across each square to peg the bags to.

I've ordered some little mini pegs from a seller on Ebay.

[craftynclothy]

A bit like this but more quilt-like.

[ValiumQueen]

Shameless bumping as this is where I have written all my ideas

[BaconAndAvocado]

I do an activity each day. Some are very low maintenance, e.g. A little note saying "In your room you will find a treat from the elves" which is a small chocolate Santa/snowman hidden in their room.

Higher maintenance activities include Xmas card making, Xmas baking, cover an orange with cloves, (actually quite painful!) letters to Santa etc, these I make sure are for the weekends.

[BaconAndAvocado]

definitely agree Valium on putting bits in night rather than in advance!

Deters any peeking too!

[ScarerAndFuck]

I put jokes and novelties from the previous years crackers in sometimes.