This week and next week’s crafts will focus on advent calendars. Advent calendars are often associated with sweets and chocolate, but they don’t need to be. They can be creative projects to make the countdown to Christmas more fun than it already is. I had a look around for ideas on how to make a good one and I found some great sites with easy crafts for kids. My first project comes from Kaboose and consists of a large drawing of Father Christmas, which you can easily draw yourself or print the template supplied by Kaboose; if you draw it yourself make sure you give Santa a large beard because that’s the fun part. The beard has 24 circles numbered 1-24 and each day before Christmas you glue a piece of cotton wool on the right number so by Christmas Day Santa will have developed a large soft white beard.  To make it sturdier I attached the drawing to a cardboard cut-out of the same shape and hung it on the wall so my son can start the beard building process from December first. 

My next project is still taking shape, but it will be much more elaborate and will include felt and some stitching. I have been inspired by the originality of some advent calendars I have seen in the shops and particularly those that can be reused so I will be making one out of felt with pockets to fill with little surprises, which will be featured on next week’s post.