A simple and inexpensive DIY Advent Calendar that you can customize

Christmas is right around the corner and that means we’re preparing for another advent season. Advent is one of my favourite pieces of the Christmas season. I’ve started a tradition of making my own advent countdown, filling it with little goodies and special activities or notes. Last years DIY Advent Calendar was a fun activity that I did with my son and I’m excited to share my West Coast Style DIY Advent Calendar that my assistant Melissa and I came up with for this Christmas Season.

Living on the West Coast with plenty of Driftwood to choose from, we were excited to put a West Coast spin on this years DIY Advent Calendar. The rest of the supplies were easy to find. A simple white bag, string or twine, a black sharpie, and cute little round stickers. Then, we finished it off with some greenery and VOILA! Now I just need to fill the little bags with some treats and we’re ready for Advent.

Preparing the Bags

We start by placing the stickers on each bag and numbering them. Then, we folded each bag over about one inch and used the hold puncher to make a hole for the string to go through.

Measure and Cut the String

We knew we wanted the lengths of the string to vary so that the bags would hang at different lengths. We decided on 3 lengths and split it between the 24 bags. From there we weaved a piece of string through each bag and started tying them to the driftwood.

Final Touches

We decided that it would be best to attach the wall hanging ribbon once we were at the location we would hang the Advent DIY. This allowed us to measure correctly and know how long we needed to make it. Once we got the Advent Calendar on the wall we added the greenery and made a few final touches to the bags and tidied up the strings.

I love the versatility of a home made Advent Calendar. Unlike the commercialized store bought kind, I can fill these little bags with personalized goodies, hand written notes, a scripture, activity, or whatever I want to use to make the Christmas Advent Calendar personal to our own Family.

I would love to hear or see your Advent DIY or how your family celebrates advent. Send me a message or tag me in your posts:) .