A quick way to a meaningful advent calendar

By Carrien BlueI like to make stuff

My kids are always asking me to buy them an advent calendar. I never want to because I detest the pictures on them. They are garish one, and two, they have nothing to do with advent! If you aren’t spending the days before Christmas looking forward to the coming of Christ, than it’s not really advent, it’s just… I don’t know, counting days.

Anyway.

This year I had an idea, which I just finished executing and I will share it with you in case anyone else out there is a last minuter like myself.

I bought the cheap paper advent calendar. $0.99 at Trader Joe’s to be exact.

Then I got out some paint I had on hand. I decided to go with a dark background because I wanted to focus on the light into darkness theme, and because it would take less coats to cover over the picture that was there. Just brush on some paint until it’s all covered . This took less than 10 minutes. You can see  all the pop out doors now.

Once that dried, I plotted my picture. It needed to be simple and easy to draw because I was doing it 4 times. Don’t spend a lot of time on this, they are, after all, going to be systematically torn open by your kids for the next 25 days.

I had paint so I used that. A silver sharpie marker would have been perfect, but I didn’t have one. when the paint was still wet I sprinkled glitter over the star and the place where the road ends. I sure hope you can tell that it is supposed to be Bethlehem and the light coming into the world at the end of a journey. (My kids will believe it when I tell them that’s what it is and that’s what matters. 🙂

And there you have it, advent calendars that remind us what it’s all about, in less than an hour.

all content © Carrien Blue

5 thoughts on “A quick way to a meaningful advent calendar”

  1. This is a fantastic idea! I hate the advent calendars, too. I'm trying this next year for sure…

    I have a wooden one by Kurt Adler that is awesome. You can get it on Amazon, and each day, they open a little door and get out a magnetic piece of the manger scene and put it on the square scene board in the middle. Baby Jesus comes out on the 25th… It's an investment, but we're going to use it for years… That reminds me; today is the day to get it out. =)

  4. I LOVE this! I bought the exact same advent calenders for my kids… I disliked the pics for all the same reasons you do, but gave in because they get such joy out of opening those doors. I think I may just go paint them right now!

  5. I love this idea! If, however, you need a tiny bit less labor intensive, and equally cheap option in the future, this website (http://www.creativecommunications.com/searchbar.php?query=advent+calendar) has a nice selection of nativity-based advent calendars for under $1 a-piece, and unlike a lot of other church-supply sites, this one has no minimum order–the calendars are not packaged in groups of 10 or 25, or anything like that.

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