My brain has been whirling with all the creative advent calendar ideas out there. I grew up with a beautiful felt advent calendar my mom made, and I want to recreate something like that for our boys. While I’m still mulling over all the options for the long term, it is the end of November, so for this year, I’ve decided to make a clothespin wreath using Christmas wrapping paper and scrapbook papers to hold 24 cards with activities we can do together through the month.

Clothespin wreath advent calendar with an activity for each day.

The instructions for the wreath are detailed in the previous post. The only changes were that I made this wreath a bit bigger (13″ diameter) to accomodate 24 pins, and I added numbers to the pins for each day. The numbers are stickers on punched out circles, and I used removable tape to stick them on the clothespins, in case we use this wreath for pictures or cards in the future.

Clothespin wreath for Christmas makes a lovely advent calendar or card display.

Numbers for a clothespin advent calendar

For the activity cards, I printed 2″x4″ shipping labels with 24 different activities, one for each day. There are lots of options – here are some I thought would be fun to do with the kids this year. I’d love to hear what you are planning, too!

• Get a Christmas tree
• Decorate the Christmas tree
• Write Christmas wish list
• Make ornaments
• Holiday Faire at school
• Make a gift for a friend or family member
• Give a homemade gift
• Drink hot chocolate
• Go see Christmas lights
• Wrap presents
• Make snowflakes
• Read How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• Read The Polar Express
• Prepare Christmas “thank you” cards
• Donate food
• Donate toys
• Decorate a gingerbread house
• Visit reindeer at the zoo
• Watch “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer”
• Watch “Frosty the Snowman”
• Make a snowman pizza
• Bake Christmas cookies
• Write cards for teachers
• Deliver gifts to teachers
• Family game night
• Snowman pancakes for breakfast
• Mail Christmas cards
• Brunch with Santa (like family photos, this is a strange torture I cannot resist!)
• Call relatives and sing carols to them
• Movie night (this is a Christmas Eve tradition for us)

I stuck the labels on cardstock in Christmas colors and patterns and then clipped them to the wreath, with the labels facing the back. We can turn over one each day!

Clothespin wreath advent calendar with a special activity for each day.

Maybe I’ll come up with a new advent calendar next year, or maybe this wreath will become our tradition. I think I’m at least as excited as the boys for the countdown to Christmas!

“Jewels”

I shared this project at: