Advent Calendar Goodies

We just posted an advent calendar in the Iron Timber shop. It is a handmade red pegboard with drawstring bags printed with numbers from antique rubber stamps.

Here are the treats I'm going to put in our advent calendar. I tried to think of a few things that are holiday traditions for our family and things that could be used year after year.

12 A scroll with the Christmas story from the scriptures and a small candle. We'll read the story by candlelight to remind us to keep the Christ in Christmas.

11 First clue for a treasure hunt to find new ornaments for the year. This year I'm going to start marking the new ornaments with the kids' names and year. I haven't done that in the past and I really wish I would have.

10 A bag of spices (cinnamon and cloves) for making apple cider.

9 A single Christmas light bulb. This will be our reminder to take a drive around town to look at the Christmas lights.

8 Mini candy canes with $1 wrapped around the stems and tied with a ribbon. My great-grandma used to give all of her great-grandkids one of these each Christmas and that is one of my favorite holiday memories.

7 A tiny jar of red and green sprinkles. My friend gave us a big jar one year with a note to use the sprinkles on everything from cookies to ice cream to oatmeal.

6 Glass hearts--one for each person in our family. Each person can do a service for someone else in the family and leave the glass heart behind (for instance, make someone else's bed and leave a glass heart on the pillow).

5 A piece from a board game to play together that night. Might be a new game or something we already have.

4 A harmonica. My grandpa always used to play us Christmas songs on the harmonica.

3 Chocolate!

2 A miniature apple. Make Grandma C's recipe for baked apple pudding.

1 Christmas Eve! An antique skeleton key hanging from a silver ribbon. This will be hung on our front door knob for Santa to use to get in our house since we don't have a chimney.