2014 Advent Calendar 1

Once again, I come back to this idea of the Advent calendar. This is something that has been following me for years. Is it the same for you?

I think it has something to do with the great pleasure there is to anticipate an event. This is sometimes even better than the real thing because you can fantasize perfect times, which rarely exist in life. In short, I like to anticipate, to act as a busy bee. Even for Halloween this year, I created a sort of countdown by offering a photo each day until October 31.

For me, The Advent Calendar, it’s already Christmas because it is symbolic. It is just a countdown every day in the spirit of the final event. It also certainly has somehing to do with the memories of the first Advent calendars of my childhood in Strasbourg.

This city is the perfect place to wait for Christmas. Alsatians have the beautiful culture of home cosyness and they are really welcoming. I even think there was an Alsatian word to describe this but I don’t remember it. Alsace also shares the tradition of Christmas with its neighbors like Germany etc. Everyone bakes shortbreads to share with others the entire month of December. The saint Nicolas is celebrated on the 6th of December. That’s why as a child I really learned to enjoy the spirit of the season before the party.

This year, as I opened my little shop of printables and paper craft on Etsy, I yielded to the temptation of creating a new Advent calendar. I was encouraged by my surroundings too.

But since I already created many digital Advent calendars for my website Minus & Gadouille (Advent calendars), I know that to have 24 steps in a project can lead to a significant amount of work. So I created an Advent box easy to cut out. I designed a simple box model (I share the blank template of the box here). Then I got inspiration from Russian designs to create a small Village, with a bohemian atmosphere. Some trees joined the houses to help stage a cute Christmas Village.

Here is the link of the Advent calendar on the shop.

I even shoot a video when I cut mine. It shows how easy it is to implement.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCPers7mV64?rel=0]

My children took great interest in the project and spent a lot of time shaking the houses hoping to find them full of candies. I still have to fill them. I thought about many little treasures for the children … I will talk about it in my very next post: 24 ideas to fill the Advent Calendar