Advent Calendar -IKEA Hack, Target Knockoff

I really like the Target mirrored advent calendars, with all the cute little doors, and the sparkly, shiny mirror. I didn’t really like the price of $35 So, when I saw this cardboard version at IKEA this Christmas for only $10 I had an idea…

Silver Leaf. I had some left over from this project, so I broke it out again. And again I fell in love with it…this might be the beginning of a silver leafed Christmas….and of course there is gold too. This project would have been amazing done in gold leaf too.

The silver leaf is really easy to apply. Just follow the directions, for mine, I applied the adhesive with a paint brush, working in sections, and after the 15 min. it said to wait, I applied the silver leaf. I removed the individual boxes and did the front section of each one. After I used scrapbook stickers from the dollar store for the numbers. You can see a little bit of the green base in some sections, if I had to do it again, I might spray the whole thing gold before I started so that it was in the little spots showing through.

It only took about an hour or so to do all the silver leaf. And I have to say that I really love how it turned out. Next it was time to add the activities.

We started the tradition a few years ago of doing an activity advent calendar together as a family. It’s a great way to make sure that the busyness of the holiday season doesn’t take over and prevent us from doing all those fun memory making activities we all want to do, but might not get around to without a plan. It’s also a way to emphasise that doing things together is more important than just buying more and more stuff. I’ve made a list of over 60 suggested activities. You can get it by clicking here. Some of them are simple, and others are more elaborate. My big tip if you’re putting one of these calendars together for your family is to do it with a little calendar print out beside you. Because the holidays are so busy, we don’t need to make more work for ourselves, so I try to include lots of things we’d be doing already. You’re likely going to decorate a tree this year, and give your kids a bath whether you do an activity calendar or not. Schedule a bubble bath with holiday music for their regular bath night, and schedule tree decorating for when you’re doing it anyway. Then, fill in with some of the other activities that catch your eye, and might help you be a little more intentional about making some memories this year, like a picnic under the Christmas tree. Make sure that busy nights have easy activities and save the big projects for when you have more time, like on the weekend.

Along with the activities you might choose a few little treats for some days. Or, if the activities don’t fit your family, you could simplify it with just treats. What ever works best for you.

This year, I tied up the activities as little scrolls and added some treats for certain days.

This will be our third year of doing this activity -see last year’s version here, and the year before that here. My kids love it. LOVE IT. And as soon as they figured out what I was working on, they got excited. I really love this version, since you could use it year after year, and fill the boxes with almost anything.

With a pretty advent calendar like this, life really is a party!

This post is linked up at The Party Brunch, Inspire Me Please Link Party, Christmas Wonderful Link Party,and  Tatertot’s and Jello’s Link Party Palaooza.