Cheap and Dirty Christmas: Easy DIY advent calendar

A little while ago I got into a twitter conversation with Michelle from MY creative and Freya from Nishaantishu about some Festive DIY ideas. Following that convo - we decided to challenge ourselves to creating some "cheap n dirty" Christmas decor ideas. Ya know - for people on a budget who still want to make their nests a festive little cocoon.

We had decided to post all our DIY ideas yesterday (yesterday for me happened to be "one of those days" I spent most of the day out and wasn't at my computer longer than 20 seconds to be able to post it all - so am doing it today - sorry ladies for the delay!). Anyway - here is a very easy budget friendly Christmas advent calendar DIY!


What you need:

• Numbers 1 - 25 (I have a download at the bottom of the post if you would like)
• Advent calendar "activity slips" (also included in the download)
• 25 envelopes
• Things to "decorate" your envelopes
• Imagination and fun activity ideas

First print out your advent number and gather whatever you are going to use to decorate your envelopes - we decided to use printed out photos from our wedding (the ones we do actually have - that didn't get attacked by an EVIL DOG) and some paper print outs of "Christmas-scrapbook papers" that I designed a while ago. (Super cost effective)

(And also washi tape - obviously)

You could also use - Christmas wrapping paper, doodles, last years' Christmas cards ribbons or anything else cheap or collected from around your home.


Next get sticking - stick one number onto each envelope and then fill the rest of the space with your photos/washi tape/ ribbons/doodles/words etc.

  
Next print out your Advent activity cards - we made the calendar together on Friday night and it was such fun! We decided to come up with 5 "activities" together and ten each of our own as a surprise that we can do together.

The good thing about creating an activity advent calendar is that you can completely tailor it to suit your budget. The majority of the tasks can be completely cost free and you can also include one or two more "special things" depending on how much you want to spend. I can't tell you too many of our activities - because the ten I created are a surprise for Warren and the ten he made, I have no idea what they are!

(Above: one of our combined tasks)

Once you have all your task lists - turn the envelopes and activities over so that you can't see any of them and then put one activity into an envelope at random. Once you have an activity in each envelope arrange them all on the door in a "Christmas Tree" formation - (as you can see from the first pic). It helps to have a variety of horizontal and vertical envelopes.


As I mentioned - yesterday ended up being a bit CRAY CRAY - so we didn't even get the chance to check out advent 1! Above is our "advent activity" for tonight, number 2 (as made by The Warr). We will have to catch up advent activity 1 at some other stage of the week. But for tonight - we shall be dancing around our lounge to our wedding song.

If you'd like to download the numbers that I created for this calendar as well as the "advent activity" squares - you can grab them HERE.

You can check out Michelle's awesome Star Garlands and Cookie Cutter Mobile and Freya's Christmas garland too!

Also - I didn't even get a gap to post my usual "7 things Sunday" yesterday so I've decided to do it now -


7 AWESOME things from this week

1. The moustache is gone
2. The moustache is gone
3. The moustache is gone
4. The moustache is gone
5. The moustache is gone
6. The moustache is gone
7. The moustache is gone.

REJOICE.

If you'd like to share any cheap and easy Christmas DIYs with us - please do! #cheapdirtyxmas