DiY Advent Calendar and Our Giveaway Winner

I have to admit my favorite place for fun little Christmas items this year has been TJ Max.  Later this week I'll feature more fun things I have found there.  I found this gift tag set for $5 and I have so many ideas for what I'm going to do with it.  I used blue gift tags from this set and the red ribbon for the first step of our advent calendar.

Step 1: Tie ribbon to gift tags.  Any ribbon and gift tags will work.  I used 25 for my advent calendar, but you could do a twelve days of Christmas countdown too.

 
Step 2: Decide what you want to write on your tags and put something fun for each day.  I wrote a mix of fun surprises and service ideas on my tags for my kids to choose each day.  You could also skip the tags all together and collect little toys and candies to put inside the pockets.

 Step 3: Making the pockets.  I chose Christmas fabric squares used for quilting in bright colors.  I cut out the numbers one to 25 and used Heat Bond to iron contrasting fabric onto small squares of fabric.  I then sewed them into little pockets using burlap as the backing.

The back of each pocket looks like this.

 
Step 4: To hang the pockets I purchased bakers twine and strung it through clothes pins that I attached to each pocket.  The bakers twine is from Crate and Barrel and the clothes pins are from the laundry section at Walmart.  You could also paint the clothes pins or Mod Podge paper on each one.  I left mine plain.

Step 5: They are ready to hang.  I used temporary hooks to string the pockets across a wall in our loft area.

Thank you to everyone that entered our first giveaway!  We loved all your comments!  We have our winner and it is...

Kenzie, e-mail us your address: annelilydesign@gmail.com and we'll mail you your new wreath.

If you didn't win and want to purchase a wreath e-mail us at annelilydesign@gmail.com for pricing.