I’m excited to share with you the advent calendar we made last year. A few years ago we made a tree advent calendar but I thought it was time to update it. The old one were all the same size trees which looked cluttered on the mantel so this time I made them all different sizes to add interest and I could put the trees in little groupings. We also didn’t make just trees but added a few wrapped boxes to break it up.

The trees are made from old cardboard cereal boxes and similar type boxes and wrapped in a cone shape with the inside showing (not the printed size) and glue gunned together. Then we decorated. I dug around the craft room to find fun things to use. I didn’t buy anything for this project it was all just stuff we had around (I those kind of projects).

We had some Christmas foam stickers from past years that Isla had fun decorating her trees.

I had 3 different types of feathers that made fun trees. The smooth red feather tree I trimmed the ends off the feather and started at the bottom and glue gunned a row of feathers. Then added another row and another at the top. I went in afterwards and filled in holes with more feathers.

The fluffy red feather tree I just added glue to the tree and stuck the feathers on all over so it’s a little crazy looking but fun.

In the photo below you can see the blue feather tree that I made. The feathers were curved so I started at the bottom again and glued just the tips down and layered up.

Other fun trees are the glitter tree and what we are calling the mermaid tail tree – which is made from punched circles of green and turquoise paper. And we also had some strings of silver beads that I wrapped around some trees – one I left with the natural box showing and the other I covered the cone with green paper first and then glued the beads around.

And then I had some little fabric trees that I made a few years back and added those into the mix.

The boxes are made from cardstock paper – the printed ones I glued wrapping paper onto a piece of cardstock first before I made the boxes. To make the boxes I used the same method I used in one of my first posts from 2007 where I turned old Christmas cards into boxes – see link for instructions.

So you might be thinking cute but what’s under or inside all the trees and boxes. We put a combination of treats (often left over Halloween candy), dollar store toys, crafts or mini books. Also we add notes such as, “go buy a Christmas tree”, “Visit Santa”, or “Family Christmas movie night”. I havne’t planned out what’s going under each tree so it’s sometimes a challenge to find something to put inside everyday. I think this year I will add more notes, “make cookies”, “write Santa letters”, “Holiday house light drive”.

December is fast approaching so it’s a good time to starting making your advent calendar now.