Thanksgiving Advent Calendar

It’s November and you know what that means… Thanksgiving!!!!  Get ready, Happy Homes, for a lot of fun this month! We’ll be celebrating with all kinds of crafts, activities, games, and magical ideas to prepare your hearts and homes for a season of gratitude and turkey fun!

To kick things off, I wanted to show you what our Happy Home is up to this month…

We made a Thanksgiving Advent Calendar!

Every day throughout November, the Happy Hubby, Happy Buddy, and I will be jotting down things that we are thankful for each day.  Then we’ll put our thankful thoughts in each day’s corresponding pocket.  When we get to Thanksgiving day, we’ll sit down as a family and read each thankful thought!

You will not even believe how easy this calendar was to make!

I’ll show you how!  And I hope along the way you’ll get inspired to make your own!  I love getting to celebrate gratitude with my family and point our hearts toward thankfulness.

“Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”   1 Thessalonians 5:18

Materials Needed –

• One large empty box of diapers
• Fall-ish scrapbook paper
• Small treat bags (I found mine in the party bag aisle at Target – package of 16 for $2.99)
• Ribbon
• Scrapbook letters (optional)
• Fall-ish stickers (optional)
• Glue

Directions –1.  Cut the empty diaper box open so that it is flat (see picture).2.  Cover the inside of the diaper box with Fall-ish scrapbook paper.  I just cut mine in all different shapes and sizes so that the whole back of the diaper box was covered.  Be careful not to glue your scrapbook paper over one of the folds in the board!3.  Cut the small treat bags in half and discard the tops.  Decorate with Fall-ish stickers and number the bags for each day that you will be counting down to Thanksgiving.

4.  Glue the treat bag halves all over the board!5.  Next I used some glittery (everything looks better with glitter!) scrapbook letters and glued them to brown paper.  I cut the letters out with magical scissors and then glued them to the top of the board to spell out “Give Thanks”.6.  Then I hot-glued some ribbon around the edges of the board to give it a nice, polished look!7.  Now our Thanksgiving Advent Calendar is ready to be used!

The Happy Hubby and I filled out our first cards last night!  I want to keep the rest a secret until Thanksgiving Day, but I’ll tell you what I was thankful for on Day 1 of our Advent Calendar Adventure…

I am thankful for happy memories from Halloween 2010!  Our little pumpkin dressed as a pumpkin – trying hard to pull his costume off every five seconds, and then coming home to grill burgers with the Happy Hubby, watch Extreme Home Makeover, and give out candy to our sweet neighborhood Trick-or-Treaters!

Happy Thanksgiving Advent Calendar-ing!