Cute and Easy DIY Holiday Advent Calendar

This advent calendar craft project works well if you have scraps of pretty Christmas paper that need to be used up. Or if you just want a reason to purchase a pad of colorful holiday patterned paper, this is an easy, DIY holiday craft project to fill your afternoon. (Or get together with your friends and have a craft night!)

You will need the following supplies:

• Twenty-five 2x2x2 inch party favor boxes. (I found mine here, in a pack of 50—some for you AND a friend—and there are color options if you don’t prefer the Kraft color.) 

• Elmers or similar glue.

• Rubber cement (not necessary but I prefer to use it when I want to avoid wrinkling.)

• Clear wrapping tape or other.

• Scissors and/or Exacto knife.

• Fancy bakers twine (can be found at most craft stores.)

• 5 different sheets of pretty holiday patterned paper.

• Numbers on squares printed on cardstock. Click or tap here for the free printable file.

• Black cardstock (you don’t need much, a scrap piece will do.)

• Something to put in the boxes.

1. Print the sheet with numbers on cardstock and cut them out. Here is the free printable file. (You’ll notice there are two pages to print. The second, is for step 2.)

2. Print the sheet with the cut marks on the back of all your patterned paper. Cut them out. If you have five different patterns, you’ll need to cut five squares out of each.

3. Lay out all your patterned squares in whatever arrangement is most pleasing to you (as seen above) and start glueing the numbers to them. This is where I like to use the rubber cement. 

TIP: If you brush rubber cement on BOTH surfaces that will be sticking to one another, let them dry, and then put them together, you won’t get any wrinkling. AND you can simply rub off any excess making it easy to get each edge and each corner totally glued down.

4. Now you can glue all your squares to the lid of each box. Again, I used rubber cement for this part.

5. Cut a 1 inch strip of your black paper. Then slice the strip into “tabs” as seen below, a little larger than 1/4 of an inch wide. You could skip this part, but I don’t recommend it. The tabs help get the lids open because they interlock with the side flaps making them difficult to open when the advent calendar is completely assembled.

6. Using Elmers glue, attach each little black tab to the lip of the lid as seen above. I used the white glue here because it has a strong bond once dry.

7. Now you need to start attaching these little gift boxes to one another. You'll find that using both glue and tape will give you the most secure, tight fit. Note: don’t use tape on the joints that will be showing on the outer edge of the final project. I also found it helpful to tape the bottoms of the boxes together too. You can use packing tape for this to get FULL coverage.

8. Wrap your fancy bakers twine around the whole thing. I recommend looping it around at least five times for a more pleasing look. IMPORTANT: If you're filling the advent calendar boxes with light weight items you can attach something as shown in the image below so it can be hung. 

Please note: My finished piece held 2 pounds of candy and when I lifted it by the hang string, the corner boxes couldn’t hold the weight. But it still looks great laid down or leaned up against the wall.

9. Now it’s time to fill your advent calendar with prizes, things to do, little notes, or candy...whatever! Then tuck those lids securely in.

If you choose to go the candy route...I highly recommend going to a bin store like WinCo or Food4Less etc. It’s an inexpensive option, and that way each box can have something different to try.

That’s it! You’re done. It’s really so simple and will turn out cute. It’s a good holiday craft project!

Melt and Pour Soapmaking Service Activity

Someone had donated A TON of plastic easter eggs to our church. So for a Relief Society (a women’s church group) activity, we decided to use the eggs as molds to make soaps to donate to a local women’s shelter.

The church budget covered the soap and supplies, all found at Michaels—don’t forget to use coupons— but we did encourage the ladies to bring their own “additives” such as herbs, lemon peel, or cinnamon and ground oatmeal, basically whatever they wanted. We had a good time.

Melt and pour soaps are the way to go for first time soap makers—which we ALL were. It was so EASY. I’m not going to run you through a tutorial as there are MANY online, and written by more experienced soap makers than me.

I want to encourage you not to shy away from this type of activity. If we could do it, so can you and your group and you’ll enjoy the evening.

I created labels to be tied to each soap. On the back we wrote the scent so the women at the shelter could pick a favorite.

If you CLICK HERE, you’ll be able to download and print the file for the tags. 

File Notes:

1. There are two kinds of soap tags, goat milk glycerin, and plain glycerin. Use the sheet that matches which soaps you made. 

2. Cut marks have been included in the files.

3. Print the pattern on the back of the tag sheet.

QUICK "HOW TO" REFERENCE 
1. Drill a hole in the egg form.
2. If the additives are larger than the hole, put them inside before closing the egg.
3. Close the egg and tape around the seam so the hot soap won’t leak out.
4. Pour some hot soap into a little cup and mix in the scent, coloring and additives.
5. Pour the mixture into the egg form and allow to cool. Preferably overnight.
DON’T FORGET TO WRITE THE SCENT ON THE MOLD.
6. Getting the soap out of the molds was a little difficult. I found it helpful to wrap a warm rag around each egg to melt the soap slightly. Some soap makers suggest using some kind of spray on the form for an easier release. (What you can use without ruining the soap depends on the type of soap, you’ll have to do a little google search for that information but it’s easy to find.)

Above: Vanilla Cinnamon Oatmeal. This one was my favorite. It smelled heavenly!
If you choose to do this as a group activity, have fun!

How to Throw a Well Attended Relief Society Activity

THE PURPOSE:

To encourage actual research and discovery of family history

Ask each woman to go into her personal  family history (either on familysearch.org or other) and trace her mother’s line back as far as she can go, following her mother’s mother’s mother’s, mother's... mother etc. Once she’s found the name, come prepared to share something about that woman.

We did this in May, it felt appropriate for Mother’s Day month. But really, you could do this any time of the year.

IDEAS FOR SHARING:

(Keep it under 3 minutes per share.) 

It can be a photo of what she might have worn, or food she might have eaten, or world events that might have had an impact on her etc. A sister might even discover an interesting story attached to that ancestors name and could briefly share it.

TORTILLAS

What do pictures of tortillas have to do with anything?

I discovered my great grandmother (7 generations back) lived in Norway.

After a tiny bit of research I discovered she would have eaten a lot of Norwegian Potato Lefse in  the 1800s. So I found a recipe for it, prepared some and brought it to share. Lefse is very similar to tortillas. I was surprised how making these me feel close to my great (times 7 ) grandmother as I cooked, I imagined her doing everything I was doing only many, many years ago.

THOUGHTS

On why this activity was so well attended:

1. People like to talk about themselves and family. 

2. It was a unique challenge and fun spin on what usually seems like a tedious and daunting task (family history work). 

3. It’s exciting to discover new things and then to be provided with an opportunity to share those discoveries with other people.

4. I've noticed “participation” activities ALWAYS have better attendance.

Please enjoy this activity. This one brought me great pleasure to attend and to help plan. And we got good feedback from the sisters as well.