Mom, is it christmas yet?

For a while now I've been thinking about what Christmas traditions I want to establish for our family to make the holiday more meaningful, especially for the kids. A couple years back I decided I wanted to have an advent calendar so every day they could do something fun or thoughtful to get ready for the coming holiday. I clocked a lot of hours scouring the internet for the perfect advent calendar but any that came close to what I wanted were all way too spendy for my taste.

Then one day I was chatting with a friend about my idea, and she told me she had made an advent calendar for her kids in the shape of a giant stocking so she could put story books, gifts, etc. down inside. Brilliant! I bought the fabric last year at an after-Christmas clearance and stashed it away in my sewing room. Then the week after Thanksgiving, I kicked into gear sketching, cutting, and trying to find the perfect way to put numbers on the pockets for each day. After some trial and error, I'm quite pleased with the results.


Here's our new advent calendar. Since Jimmy is currently learning about days of the month and calendars, I decided to leave the pockets blank so that we could put the number on each day and count down to Christmas.


Inside each pocket is a piece of paper with a scripture, story or activity to do and a piece of candy (of course).

I love it because it's a perfect answer to Jimmy's latest favorite question: "Mom, is it Christmas yet?" I just say, "Honey, go check the advent calendar and count how many days are left until Christmas."

And he does.