ADVENT-urous

Advent calendars are a must in our house. I’ve had one every year, even into my adult life because we kick off advent and my birthday on the same day! So, of course I want my kids to have them but I don’t like to give them chocolate first thing in the morning and anything else gives us too many pieces that lay around and get forgotten after the holidays. Since I’m a constant 5 seconds from selling everything and building a tiny home compound, I decided to make a calendar that we can reuse every year; one that contains all its pieces in one place. More importantly, I want to create more things for our home that have meaning and purpose, that aren’t just stuff and clutter. I want my kids to appreciate what they have and spark joy that’s more of a slow burn over instant and fleeting gratification. Anyway, I’m getting too deep for an advent calendar post.

In my search for inspiration, I kept veering towards simple Scandinavian, build-a-scene type calendars so that’s what I made. Every day you take a character out and put it on the mountain, building the scene until Christmas Eve…

but funny story (not really), I only made 24 characters but drilled 25 holes so I made a New Year’s Eve one to extend the fun lol.

My hope is that one day this will be an heirloom piece but I know that has about as much success as saying “make it go viral.” It will at least serve our little family for years to come and hopefully will be memorable enough to stand the test of time.

Some features that I tossed in include numbering the pieces; so like an advent, you have to find the right number and this is because I strategically placed triggers at regular intervals! So for instance, the 14th day is a cup of hot chocolate, so on the day we draw that number, we will have hot chocolate. #1 is presents because of course, it’s my birthday. #24 is of course Santa because he comes that night….and so on.

This is entirely designed from my brain with some illustrative help from LePetitMarket because I’m not entirely a great illustrator. The box is made from cedar that’s been sealed and the mountains are sandwiched MDF (because it doesn’t warp) and acrylic. The clouds are etched acrylic.