Advent Calendar

Simple, quick, and cheap. No fabric involved. I have never done an advent calendar before, mostly because I thought my kids were too young to get it and partly because I didn't want to invest all the time in making one... and its not too late to start one for this year either. Who says you have to do all 25 days.
It is amazing what you can do with $8 and a couple of glue sticks. With the $8 I bought the brown paper lunch bags and a few dollar store toys to go inside some of the bags. The decorative paper was left over from another project last year, but definitely isn't necessary. When it comes down to it all you need is the brown paper bags, something to put in them and a pen to mark down the days. Most of the items in the bags came from our house (old Halloween candy, gum, hot coco mix, muffin mix, etc). We open the bag of the day after the kids find Buddy. The kids have loved it and so have I.

The great thing about this advent calendar is that I will have nothing to store for next year. Straight to the recycle bin. Today Buddy was hiding in a stocking and the advent bag revealed Andy's mint chocolates...they were left over from my birthday. I know I'm cheap, but the kids didn't seem to mind a bit.