Frugal Advent Calendar

The countdown has begun!  Our Christmas tree is up and decorated and slowly, but surly, the rest of the decorations are making there way up around the house. 

The little Beanes are VERY excited this year.  Every commercial they see sparks the desire to have that toy. 

I am excited too.  I love Christmas.  I love the excitement that my little Beanes have.  When I was growing up, my favorite Christmas tradition was the advent calender.  I always had the kind that you buy in the card section of Hallmark.  You open the door every day counting down to Christmas Eve.  My favorite kind was the progressive story.  Each day it told a little bit more.  I remember having one that told the story of the Littlest Angel and one year I had one that told the Bible Christmas story. 

This year, I am trying out a new advent calender for my little ones.  I hope it builds a cool Christmas tradition that we can do as a family for many years to come.

I went through all of our children's books and pulled out all of the Christmas ones.  I wrapped each one up in newspaper and tied a Christmas ribbon around each one.  I used some old scrapbook paper and number stickers to number each present 1-24.

I used to teach kindergarten and I have a love for children's books, so I actually had 23 Christmas books.  I am going to have to run to the dollar tree and pick up one more to wrap up.

We will use this as our advent calender this year!  Each night, before bedtime, one of the children will get book numbered for that date and they will open it up and we will read it at bedtime.

I did not order the books I had in any particular way.  With the exception of, book number 1 is the Elf on the Shelf book and book number 24 is my favorite version of The Night Before Christmas. 



This one is The Elf on the Shelf



This could totally been done in a much cuter way.  But I am one of the crafty impaired moms of the world.  My little ones really just love to open presents and, truth be told, so do I.  And I was trying to create a frugal Christmas Advent calender and buying a bunch of wrapping paper and supplies would not have been cheap!  So I just used what I had on hand.

I am trying to decide how I want to handle this though.  Should I just let the little Beanes take turns opening the book each night or should I have one of them get the correct number and give it to their brother or sister to open up?  What do you think? 

What Christmas traditions are you trying this year? 



I am linking up at Metamorphosis Monday and these other Awesome Parties!