Advent Calendar

I've been looking for a neat Advent Calendar that I could make for Josephine this year. She can already count to 12, so I thought a calendar would help her practice. While at Thai Pan Trading with my awesome mother-in-law I saw something that sparked the idea for my Christmas Countdown calendar.

It took us a little while to throw the whole thing together (we were making 4), but I thought I'd give some simple directions on how to make it.

Supplies:
1 cookie sheet
Green paper for Christmas tree
Decoration for bottom of tree
25 large clear glass rocks (see last picture, may also be known as vase gems)
25 1-inch circles
Numbers 1 through 25
25 magnets
Hot glue gun
Modge-podge

1. Buy a cookie sheet. We bought the largest silver cookie sheet that Wal-Mart sold, we were a little concerned about 25 large rocks fitting.

2. Cut out a tree. We took parchment paper and drew a stencil for the tree, then we used 1 1/2 sheets of 12 x 12 paper to make the tree. If you're not sure whether your tree is big enough try putting all 25 rocks on.

3. Decide what you'd like at the bottom of your tree. We were originally going to put presents under the tree, but found this snowman paper at JoAnns.


4. Then modge-podge your tree and snowman to the cookie sheet. Allow the bottom glue to dry before modge-podging over the top, otherwise your paper will bubble. Also, we didn't modge-podge where their was no paper because it peeled off easily and didn't look the best.


5. Cut out 25 1-inch circles. We used several different sheets of paper. Some we cut out by tracing the rocks, and some we had the Cricut cut out. As you can see, in the end we had way more than we needed, but this allowed us to pick and choose which circles we liked best to go on our rocks. For fun we made a gold glitter star to go under the number 25, that way we'd have a star at the top of our calendar.


6. Cut out the numbers 1 through 25. I also had my Cricut do this. However, if you don't have a Cricut you could use number stickers or have your printer print the numbers directly on the paper you'll be using for your circles.

7. Modge-podge over the circles, place your number (unless you're using stickers, and then you should reverse these steps), and place the rock on top. Allow to dry. Pay attention to your numbers, we had someone end up with two 16 rocks because they weren't paying attention.

8. Hot glue magnet to the back of the rock. We bought a 52 magnet pack at Wal-Mart for about $3.

9. To hang the cookie sheet we drilled (using my husband's titanium bits) holes in the top lip and ran a ribbon scrap through it. Another option could be using a picture stand.

I wish you success with your own Christmas Countdown calendar.

p.s. It doesn't have a title on the cookie sheet because we couldn't agree on what it should say, or how to do it. But, I have future plans of placing "Countdown to Christmas " at the top of my cookie sheet.