Christmas Advent Calendar

Evening all! What a day it has been. After pulling an all niter with a sick baby (who also woke up with pink eye, gross!), I dropped my sister-in-law and niece off at the airport. They were sneaking off to North Carolina for a week long visit with her side of the family. I'm a bit sad that they won't be spending Thanksgiving with us, but know how important it is for her to get to be with her mom and siblings.

My kiddos and I were supposed to go to an annual Christmas parade in a near by town, but decided since my little guy was feeling puny (and due to the gunk in his eye), we better sit this one out.  Did I  mention that it was a very cold and windy day here in Missouri? 25° and windy, brrr...

Anyhow, every year my dad buys both girls their own advent calendar.  I thought that it would be fun to try and make one that they could use over and over and fill with their favorite candy.  I wish that I could say that I snuck off to my craft room to finish up on the Christmas advent calendar I started yesterday, but I will have to settle for saying that I lugged a bunch of my stuff to the kitchen counter...I don't have a craft room! I hope to someday! wink wink hubby!

Here are a few of the pictures of how it turned out. I wish the pictures were a little better, but I am working in a poorly lit kitchen. lol 
 

I used this really cute paper from My Minds Eye called 12 Days of Christmas for each of the little drawers.  Then I cut each of the numbers out with a die from My Creative Time.  Its hard to tell from the picture, but I wrapped a ribbon around the entire calendar so it would look like a present and topped it off with a bow.  I made the bow by crisscrossing two of the medium scallop bow dies from My Creative Time. You can see this a bit better here.

 

In each of the drawers I have placed a piece of candy for both of the girls (my little guy is too small for candy).  I chose two of their favorites, peanut butter cups and kisses. I can feel my waistline expanding just thinking about them. lol.  Anyway, I used one of my circle punches to cut the patterned paper and then inked all the edges and stamped each circle with some stamps from Post Card Add Ons stamp set from My Creative Time and then adhered them to the candy.

 

 

 

Considering this is my first non-card project, I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.  However, I think I might go back later and add a few things on to the drawers just to jazz it up a bit. I also will be trying to figure out how to get pictures that are a lot more clear!