Advent Hide-and-Seek Calendars

It's December 1st! Hooray! Finally, it's officially the season for holiday music and decor! Truth be told, I've been carol-ing since November 19th and we put up our tree the day after US Thanksgiving, but at least I can now be obnoxiously open about how excited I am for the holidays!

Last year, I decided that, rather than buy those paper advent calendars with lame little 'chocolates' (that don't really even taste like proper chocolate) in them, that I would make these folk art-style advent calendars and stuff them with goodies myself. Since last year was my first year with these advent calendars and my kids were only 3 and 4 years old, I stuck to really simple things like mini candy canes, stickers, and chocolate kisses.

This year, I thought -- why not make this really fun? We have (so far) resisted getting an Elf on the Shelf, but I thought I'd incorporate a little bit of hide-and-seek adventure into the advent calendars this year. So, on top of the usual foil-wrapped Santas and chocolate kisses, I decided to throw in *little* holiday activity kits: wax sticks that bend into the shape of ornaments, mini cloth stockings that they can color themselves, playdoh, expandable animal foam shapes that you put in water, etc. Basically, anything relatively inexpensive and small (I relied heavily on the dollar bins at the craft store and Target for most of these)!

Here's my production line late yesterday afternoon...

I discovered that my the only challenge is the size of the pockets that I made. They are basically 2" x 2" squares, which is actually quite small in terms of fitting little toys into them... hence, the treasure hunt element that I added this year.

Here's how it works: many of the pockets have little items in them, but for 7 of the 24 days between now and Christmas, the kids will get a paper clue to direct them to look somewhere else in the house. Since the activity kit items are too big to stash inside the felt pockets, I placed them in cute paper craft bags, folded over at the top with holiday Washi tape, and wrote the date they should be opened. This means I'll have to stash them throughout the house the night before the 'reveal' date, so they won't be found and opened before, but I think it will be a fun element to add to the traditional advent calendar opening!

So, here the calendars are, stuffed, up and ready to go! Let's hope the kids like them! Ours are mounted to a thumbtack inside the top of a pantry cabinet, so they hang at eye-level and torment the kids all month long until they can open each pocket! You can see the first big clue inside today's pocket, waiting with a little chocolate Santa to send them on their way!