My husband Mark absolutely loves the Christmas season and everything that goes along with it. He was brought up with the most elaborate Christmases you can imagine. I recall the first year we spent Christmas together; his father dressed up as Santa and handed out endless presents from his little red sack (important note: this was an adults only Christmas – no kids to be seen). I have to admit, I used to be a bit of a Grinch, but his enthusiasm and yearly cheer eventually warmed the cockles of my heart.

Last week Mark kicked off the Christmas season by bringing home Christmas mums ‘from’ my baby daughter and an advent calendar full of tasty chocolates. And with that, the holiday season had arrived! Though I’m not very crafty, the advent calendar inspired me to make something original for baby’s first Christmas. I logged on to Pinterest and started searching for a DIY advent calendar. The ideas were endless!

I loved this one! It is a bunch of little individual decorated tins filled with M&M candies.

Make your own

The next one I really liked was a little matchbox Christmas tree. You could put anything you wanted inside the little boxes.

Make your own

And then it dawned on me that a food based advent calendar wouldn’t really work if I wanted to involve my 3-month old daughter, Maggie. So instead I would do an activity advent calendar (note: I thought this was THE MOST BRILLIANT, original idea in the history of ideas. However, a quick Google search will show you I was not the first.) So it was settled, I’d do a family advent calendar. TA DA!

Make your own

Many of the activities I included are yearly traditions, but there are some general holiday ideas as well. So here’s a sample of my 24 days:

1. Roast chestnuts
5. Sing christmas songs
15. Drink eggnog, eat fruitcake
18. Go for a walk to smell pine trees
22. Tell the story of your best gift

There’s still time to create your own DIY advent calendar before the Christmas season kicks off. Do you have any special yearly DIY traditions?