Make an advent calendar.
Sounds easy, right?
Yeah...no. See, we already have an advent calendar. You know, one of those little store-bought houses that has 24 doors, each of which need to be opened every day on the way to Christmas day. My kids really love this little house. But there's a problem...I have 3 kids...each of whom wants to open a door every day.
Do the math. It doesn't work. So I set out to solve our little "problem." And here were my parameters...
Use an Elmer's foam board plus one of Elmer's Memory Keeping items. I can so do this...can't I?
I started by heading to Wal-Mart to find my supplies...
check out my shopping experience here...Ty and I had so much fun...(well, at least I did...I think Ty got a little impatient with me...)
When we got home I laid out my supplies...
...and tried to figure out what to do...
Ever have everything you need for a project, but don't know how to start?
Suddenly, it dawned on me...what if each child had his/her OWN advent calendar...and what if each of those individual calendars could create ONE calendar? I wanted to use the idea of opening "experiences" on the calendar, too - rather than just a piece of candy. Yeah...this could work.
I started by cutting my foam boards into 4 pieces...1 piece for each of the kids and 1 for the combined board...cutting the board was surprisingly easy with my X-Acto knife...
I don't usually use normal glue to adhere paper to things...but, I gotta tell ya...this glue was great - especially because one end of the glue stick was really wide & included a spreader. It made the gluing part really quick...
Then I ran upstairs and spray-painted my foam board a light blue...I'm really digging the light blue/red combo for Christmas. The boards do come in a variety of different colors, but I wasn't really sure what I was going to do for this project while I was shopping, so I went with the white. The spray paint worked perfectly, though, and I was left with a great base for my calendar...
Here was my next obstacle...how to make the boards so that each of my children could open an "experience."
Bingo...turn the calendar into a sort of puzzle! Each child can open part of the puzzle...and together, the parts make the "experience!" Yay!!!
I sat down at my laptop, opened up MicroSoft Office & started typing...trying to keep my "experiences" to 3-word phrases (good thing I have only 3...this would have been waaaaay more challenging with more kids)...
Here's what I did:
Then I cut the pages down into "days" and the "days" into separate words or phrases (making sure to keep my days together...how confusing would it be if just random words were on each kids' calendar?)
In order to place the words on each calendar, I decided to make little envelopes for each day, and then put the envelopes onto each board...but I really didn't have the time or inclination to make actual envelopes for each word...here's my cheat...
I found some small-ish paper bags that I had bought from Whisker Graphics and cut them (first in half length-wise and then into smaller sections) so that I got a bunch of little folders...I got 8 folders out of each of the larger bags and 6 out of the smaller ones...this was really easy to do, and it took hardly any time...
Once I had this done, I decided to focus some attention on the bigger board...I cut a large ornament out of card stock on my Silhouette and glued it to the board...then I used the Elmer's Wet & Dry Dual Tip Glue Pen again, this time on the front of the ornament (the large white lines on the photo below) and with the repositionable option (this was really easy...you just spread the glue where you want it and let it dry...it dries to this clear tacky surface...so cool...and definitely something that will remain a staple in my supply).
You'll see what I did with this "today" in just a second...
Then I used some of the Elmer's Sparkle Glue around the ornament and on some of the little day envelopes...just to perk them up a bit...(you can see the gold outlining my ornament above). This glue has a really fine tip and comes out very easily...so adding the sparkle is really easy...
While everything was drying on the larger board, I turned my attention back to the smaller boards...I added the kids names to the boards (cut from my Silhouette), and then added repositionable glue dots (just like a did above on the ornament...24 of them) to each board so there would be a way to hang each folder...confused yet? (smile)
After the glue dots were dry, I added each folder to each of the kids' boards...
This part was really fun...the tacky glue is really awesome...things stick instantly and are pretty easy to remove...
OK...now that the smaller boards were all done, I went back, AGAIN, to the larger board. I decided that I wanted to have a place to list all of the things we had already done for the holiday so I added this...
After we're done with a day's adventure we can pin it up here (the plus side of using an Elmer's foam board & not just paper...you can stick pins in it...)
Then I added a couple of these with the sparkle glue...
And then...guess what? I was done! Woo hoo!!!!
Here are the finished individual boards...
Kinsley's
Grayson's
Tyler's
When the kids opened their folders yesterday morning, they had to "solve" the puzzle before they could stick it on the board...right smack dab on the "today" ornament...marking the ornament like this should keep it pretty obvious what our daily goal is...I think they thought this was pretty cool...
I'm really happy with the way it turned out. The Elmer's products were incredible easy to use and the kids love that they can each participate in the advent...every. single. day.
This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Elmer's #gluenglitter #collectivebias #CBias
While I was compensated for my participation, all opinions are 100% mine.
