I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Now we can all officially concentrate on Christmas, right? For the third day of Christmas, we are sharing some DIY Christmas countdown calendars with you. I had lots of fun making this rustic Christmas Advent Calendar and our youngest son can hardly wait until December 1 to see what will be in all the bags each day!

You can find the tutorial with more pictures below, and at the bottom of the post check out all the other countdown calendar ideas from the many talented bloggers we have joining us for this blog hop.

If you want to see what I have posted for the other days follow these links:

• Day 1 – Finger Knitted Christmas Wreath
• Day 2 – 30 Homemade Christmas Gift Ideas
• Day 4 – Paper Christmas Cookies Kid’s Craft
• Day 5 – Cream Cheese Christmas Tree with Crackers and Pepper Jelly
• Day 6 – DIY Wooden Bead Feather Ornament
• Day 7 – White Village Christmas Mantel
• Day 8 – Christmas Morning Muffins in a Jar
• Day 9 – Simple Hand Embroidered Gift Tags
• Day 10 – Blush and Rose Gold Christmas Tree
• Day 11 – Homemade Snickers Bars
• Day 12 – Knitted Christmas Stockings

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Welcome to Day 3 of the Fourth Annual 12 Days of Christmas Series!

We have teamed up with 50 plus bloggers to bring you a oodles of DIY ideas and recipes to make your holiday season merrier. There are 12 different posts in the series and we have spread them out over a four week period with three posts per week. Now is the time to subscribe!

GO HERE for the complete list of Dates and Topics plus a collection of the most popular holiday ideas including ornaments, games, recipes and more from all 50 plus talented bloggers!

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This will be our first year having an advent calendar. We have a couple countdown calendars around that we have used for Christmas in the past but we have never done one where the kids get something each day. To be honest, I have always shied away from it for a couple reasons. For one, I didn’t think they needed a gift or candy daily for 25 days straight. Not that our kids are spoiled but they do not want for much. I do not want them to become unappreciative or start to expect something.

The second reason is that it seemed like a lot of work! Ha! Maybe I am just lazy but the thought of coming up with 25 different ideas was daunting. It is hard enough to figure out what they are all getting for Christmas presents let alone extra daily gifts!

But as I was looking around at advent calendar ideas on Pinterest, I started seeing all kinds of ideas that we could incorporate into ours. Some people do candy or little gifts of course, but I really liked the idea of putting a slip of paper into the bags with fun activities to do as a family or random acts of kindness that the kids could do that day.

I think what I will end up doing is a mixture of all the ideas I found. Some days will be a family activity when we have a little extra time (like on the weekends) or a random act of kindness. Other days when I know we already have things planned or are just busier will be candy or an extra privilege for the kids. For example getting to stay up 1/2 hour later. 🙂

Our youngest son started helping me make the calendar after he heard what it was all about. He is really excited for December to get here now. 😉 It is getting me more excited about it seeing his excitement. Sometimes I think we get too wrapped up in our busy lives and need to slow down and enjoy the small things. Like the excitement playing a board game with your kids can bring to them.

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use.  If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase.  I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself. Thank you for supporting my blog!

For this project you will need:

• Wooden Crates
• Wired Ribbon – mine was 1.5″ by 30 ft
• Paper Bags
• Clothespins
• Patterned Paper
• White Card Stock
• Paper Cutter
• Tape Runner
• Wood Tacks
• Square Punch (optional)

I used wooden crates as the base for my advent calendar. We had gotten these crates originally to use at my son’s Eagle court of honor for a cupcake display. I arranged them into a Christmas tree shape and thought it would look cute running some ribbon down the “tree”. What do you think, does it look like a Christmas tree?

I was going to put a star on the top but I did not have one that was the right size. Plus I thought the lantern and little tree fit the rustic theme of the crates. So they became my tree topper. 😉

I cut the ribbon into sections of 3 ft and 4 ft. The 3 ft sections were put on the vertical crates and the 4 foot sections were used on the horizontal crates. I arranged the ribbon going back and forth across the front of the crates. The extra length of ribbon was easy to curl around my finger since it was a wired ribbon. I love the plaid ribbon, don’t you? Again it added to the rustic look.

The rest of the advent calendar came together pretty quickly. I wanted something that would be quick to make but still cute. I liked the look of the brown paper bags I have seen others use so I used that idea as well. Plus, I knew they would fit well into my theme. But they needed some numbers on them!

I printed some numbers onto a piece of white card stock. Here are the numbers I used if you want to use them too. They are the perfect size to cut out with a 1 3/8″ square punch.

I just turned the punch upside down so I could center the number in the square. It didn’t take long to punch out all the numbers.

I got a piece of Christmas scrapbook paper to use as a background for the numbers. The paper was cut into 2″ squares using my paper cutter.

I used a tape runner to attach the numbers to the scrapbook paper.

These mini paper bags and clothespins were the perfect size! I found them at Walmart in the craft section.

Each bag was rolled down about 1/2″ three times. Then I attached them with the numbers to the ribbon using the clothespins.

I am excited to fill the bags and watch our kids open them to find out which surprise is in store for them that day! It should be lots of fun!

Have a great weekend! I will be back on Monday with a fun kid’s Christmas craft to share with you!

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