Advent Jars

It's advent. It means coming. The time is coming to celebrate Jesus's birthday! Tomorrow is the first day of December and I will be finishing this up this afternoon. I wanted to show it to you unfinished in case you haven't come up with an Christmas countdown for your kids.

In the past we have had one of those punch out the doors, chocolate, paper calendars. Fun, but it's all about the Chocolate. I wanted something this year that was about more than that. I wanted room for a little treat but also for a gift or two, and a slip of paper with a fun activity or a service we could do for someone else. I have two kids, I need lots of room. I also wanted it to be big enough that the kids could see the numbers.

I would have like to sew something but my machine is on the fritz. So, I started digging around in the basement and found a box of jars. Then I cleaned out the fridge and the cupboards and found a few more. Then I made spaghetti so I had 25 jars! I think you could also use baby food jars, tin cans wrapped in paper, drinking glasses??

 I wanted my jars to have some color so I filled each one with a strip of scrapbook paper. No glue or anything, just slid it in each jar. My jars were different sizes so I laid my jars on the paper and made a mark to determine how long they needed to be. You may need to adjust some since a few jars angled in at the top and such.

See, slid them right in.

And then the tags. Oh the tags. I'd have loved to have a Silhouette and cut out some awesome vinyl letters to slap on my jars. Or a Cricut to make some awesome tags. Alas, I do not so I came up with some tags in Publisher and printed on scrapbook paper and cut with a plain old scissors and punched with a plain old paper punch.

Tied on the tags with some red & gold ribbon and put them on the mantel. Mine aren't quite done because I ran out of gold ribbon! Back to the store today!

I also be back later this afternoon with some ideas of what will be filling our jars!