My Best DIY Advent Calendar Yet

We still have quite a bit of boxes over here since we moved in September and in a flash of panic yesterday it dawned on me that I need to dig through them to find the Advent calendar I made for Nia last year inspired by This Little Street's feature I saw on The Holiday Collective's Instagram account. I remembered I posted this teaser and realized I never shared the tutorial so here we go!


In years past I used the paper bag method shaped into a tree and taped onto a door or wall. Last year I switched it up since Grayson started being mobile, and I just knew he'd rip down the bags - the tree however he didn't mess with too much (whew!).

Materials:
-Large glass jar with a handle(preferably with an angled lid to make it easy for little hands to reach in)
-Craft snow fluff (enough to cover jar lid)
-Ornament to cover jar lid (I picked a brown angel to resemble Nia!)
-5-7 mini-cardboard boxes (depending on the size of your jar you'll reuse them, so get just enough to fill your jar 1x)
-Chalkboard-style sticker labels (these will number the boxes)
-Erasable white chalk marker
-25 Advent treats

Directions:

1) Cover the lid of your jar with snow tucking under the lid and securing with hot glue

2) Glue your ornament on the lid and set aside the lid to dry

3) Assemble and label your mini-cardboard boxes, placing stickers on them and numbering with the erasable white chalk marker 

4) Fill your boxes with treats, place as many as will fit into the jar and cover with the lid 

Isn't this super easy and adorable? Nia was so surprised to see her Advent calendar and especially liked the brown angel - I got her at Target!

I liked that I could put the jar up high away from Grayson and that Nia could access it on her own - she's good about only opening one box each day. As the boxes were opened I'd simply re-number them and replenish. I found treats at Target and Michael's dollar bins (I liked the tubes of figurines especially!) and would do things like get multipacks of stickers, mini-playdough and bracelets to break up and spread between days. Each day Nia wakes up eager to open her Advent calendar.

Now I'm off to find which box has the Advent calendar so I can get it set up tonight!

Have you ever tried a DIY Advent calendar? We do a traditional chocolate one too!