Our First Advent Calendars

Until I started reading blogs I never knew what an advent calendar was , since then I have wanted to make them but was always to busy , well this year I just made time to do it , one of them that is the other one was store bought .

Since I never had anything like this growing up I think I was more excited than the kids were about Dec. 1st rolling around , but after that first day Riley has been getting up every morning and just can't wait to see what she gets for that day , I think the calendars also help kids wait more patiently for Christmas . 

I am definitely going to make this a tradition at our house and hopefully will get to make some more next year .

These are just Christmas goodie containers I found these at ABC distributing  , my mom has an account there and sometimes I order stuff on her account but you get exactly 24 of these for around 5.95 .

I made this one out of toilet paper and paper towel rolls , I just put scrap booking paper around them and then  a cardboard bottom on each one , I think they look kind of like candles , you can also use fabric if you want to but I have a lot of scrap booking paper .

I also used ticket stubs and to my surprise Riley liked these better than candy or prizes , on the tickets I wrote things like Ice cream , board games with mom , her favorite was a trip to pet smart .