Last year, in a vain attempt to be more exciting than a Lego Advent Calendar, I made up a calendar of “Things We Can Do Together”.
I resent feeling obliged to spend money on pointless bits of crap to put in an Advent Calendar, and there are lots of cool things to do, and things that need making in the run up to Christmas, so this is what we are doing this year. Feel free to borrow any of the ideas 🙂
1) Write a letter to Father Christmas-you can find some templates online or just use plain paper and pretty it up in ‘some kind of imaginative festive way’
2) Have a toy sort out and take some to a charity shop. This may or may not happen. I like the idea of it, but it is possibly a little mean and is almost inevitably going to end in tears (most probably mine)
3) Make some Christmas cards-I saw these cute snowmen on on the Pinaddicts blog, so might try these
Image from Jenny at The Gingerbread House on the Pinaddicts Challenge site
4) Decorate some wrapping paper-I have a huge big roll of plain brown paper which we got from the Scrapstore, and quite fancy some apple or potato printing
5) Make Christmas biscuits-we did these last year, and they are yummy
6) Decorate Christmas biscuits-see, you can spin biscuits out over two days 😉
7) Christmas Fair at a local school
8) Christmas Craft Day with Wiltshire Wildlife Trust at Langford Lakes-Making wreaths and other festive goodies
9) Visit the library and find some festive books to come home and snuggle up with
10) Make some salt dough decorations-we did this last year, and it worked really well. I am not sure though that they will have survived a year in our loft, so we will make some more
11) Make some decorations-paper chains/snowflakes, that kind of thing
12) Make a wreath-last year I made one from baubles, and BigSmall made his own version…
13) Put the tree up-not sure yet what form this will take-last year’s magnificent Egg Box Tree will take some beating
14) Another Christmas Fair-this time at Pre-School
15) Snuggle on the sofa for a Christmas DVD
16) Visit Longleat-we live really close, and have passes, and they have this awesome giant singing Christmas tree…
17) Christmas Party at Playgroup
18) The library are doing a Christmas story time in the evening, and the kids have to come in their PJs with their teddies-very sweet
19) Christmas Lunch at school
20) Decorate the Christmas cake-this was last year’s attempt-please pay attention to the crocheted trim!
21) Walk/bike around town to look at the blinged up houses
22) Some kind of visit to Santa-we have taken ours on the Santa Special on the Watercress Line for the last couple of years-it is pricey, but my parents have paid for it in the past!
23) Make crackers-I plan to do this EVERY year, and every year I fail. This year we WILL do it…
24) Put out the mince pie, carrot and milk for Father Christmas and hang up the stockings, and then refrain from bursting with excitement
My Make Do and Mend Year 
What a fab idea! A customised advent calendar! I remember when our eldest daughter was a penniless student at uni, I made her an advent calendar and behind each door I put a £1 coin, which was a lot of money to her 15 years ago!
Reblogged this on Gippsland Granny and commented:
I like this idea. You could use your existing advent calendar and put an activity in the alternate days and a small gift in the others.
Thanks for re-blogging! We have an ‘Advent lorry’ that my Nana bought for BigSmall’s first Christmas that has little draws in it, just big enough for a scrap of paper!
Great idea. I have reblogged this on Gippsland Granny. http://www.Suth2.wordpress.com
I envy you! I reckon I’ll be lucky if I can get my teens to do much more than smash Extra Strong Mints into smithereens for my festive after dinner mints and assemble a gingerbread house this year. Mind you, they’ll still be expected to clean their bedrooms in preparation for FC’s visit!
Yes, teenagers would be another matter all together… Loving the sound of your after dinner mints-got a recipe?!
What a lovely idea! These are all the things that Christmas memories are made of.
When I was growing up, we had commercial advent calendars but they didn’t have gifts or chocolate, just a cute picture behind the door, or the answer to a joke that was on the outside or something like that. We loved them and used them year after year until the thin cardboard doors barely shut any more. Plus we had the felt wreath with velcro-backed felt decorations in a bag so you could draw one out every night. I still have that and I treasure it.
We were the same with the picture behind the door calendars-in face, my mother in law still has the one that hubby used to have and puts it up now for the Smalls 🙂
Love the sound of the wreath-will have to see if I can make one!
One idea I saw was for a child to spend £X for the food bank on items of their choice, which I thought was a lovely idea on so many levels. I know your smalls, might be a bit too small & it’s spending money but I mention it anyway.
I’ll have to try and remember that one for when they are bigger, thanks Su!
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I saw this on Gippsland Granny’s reblog and think it’s a lovely idea.
I absolutely love your egg box tree. And fantastic ideas definitely got me thinking.
When our daughter was a penniless student at uni I put a £1 coin into each advent window. She loved it, it was a lot of money 15 years ago!
We’re Catholic, so we use something like this – http://catholicblogger1.blogspot.cz/2011/10/2011-printable-advent-chain.html
It’s an advent chain that you staple together, and each day they take another one off and do the activity. It works like a charm and focuses on charity rather than things…
I love this! I think my favourite one is “Go and hug everyone in the family” 🙂
I made an activity-based advent calendar too. There are a few days where the activity is a ‘Christmas treasure hunt’ which will end with a not-super-cheap-and-crappy piece of holiday candy or a Lego mini fig. Saves my sanity on a day I already know will be very busy!
Always good to have some sanity savers built in-good thinking!
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