Printable & Customizable Advent Calendar
I think we can all agree that there is nothing more special than an advent calendar (we've already been over this.). Advent calendars are the freaking shit. In fact, I think we should have advent calendars to celebrate the coming of all sorts of things. I can't believe I didn't think of that before. That's a fucking brilliant idea. I will have advent calendars to count down the days until President's Day. And Voting Day. And my birthday. You are probably saying, "Lizzie, they only sell advent calendars around Christmas," which makes you a Debbie Downer. To combat your pessimissm, I present you a printable DIY advent calendar for you to use to celebrate any holiday you can count down to.
This is pretty self-explainatory, but here are the steps:
Materials:
4 sheets of beige cover-weight paper (or any color you damn well please, really)
Scissors
24 wee baggies (you can buy empty tea bags anywhere that sells loose leaf tea)
Twine
Stapler or tape
Steps:
1.) Download and print the following number tags on the cover-weight paper:
Each file should print on a singe page (6 number tags per sheet of paper.)
2.) Cut out all 24 tags and fold them in half like a hotdog.
3.) Fill your bags with whatever you want! Chocolate, words of inspiration, tea, priceless jewels - if you can dream it, you can stuff it (taking into consideration the size of your baggies.)
4.) Staple or tape the folded tags to the baggies so that the tags cover the baggies' wee openings.
5.) String your twine through the tops of the tagged baggies in numerical order. Or not. Do it how ever you like. You do you, man.
6.) Take a step back and feel good about yourself. You did this.
7.) Hang it up somewhere.
I did not come up with this design on my own. No, no. We recently evoked Ally Franklin (that happened here) on the blog. Ally is married to this badass named Samantha (also a Virgo). This Christmas season - which, as far as I am concerned, has already started in full force - Ally wanted to do something sneaky and special for Sam. Ally decided to make Sam a surprise advent calendar garland to hang in their house. In a moment of design software frustration, Ally asked me to help. Ally filled her baggies with itunes song codes so that every day of Advent, Sam can discover a new song that Ally bought for her. Ally hung their garland on a wall:
But you can hang your garland anywhere you want! For example, on a fireplace:
Or perhaps where you know she will find it, in the fridge:
Even though it the becomes super difficult to access the orange juice. Or, I don't know, give it to a baby penguin to hold for the Christmas season:
The possibilities are pretty much endless.
And when Christmas is over, refill that bad boy and start counting down to Valentines!