Christmas Countdown Calender

Growing up, my parents always had a countdown calender.  It would vary year to year, but the ending result was that we knew how many days until Christmas....and we got a piece of chocolate each night before bed!  I have done the same for my children, but leading up to this year, I always bought one at the Dollar General and saved myself a lot trouble!  This year, however, I wanted to do something much cooler and much more...homemade!  I decided to make my own!!!  I searched my beloved Pinterest for inspiration and hatched an idea that I think managed to complete our Christmas decor....and I only need one...instead of FOUR!

First thing was first, I had to dust of the Cricut Machine.  I have not used that since Valentine's day and it literally had a layer of dust on it!!  I decided to make bags for the countdown, this way I could place enough candy for each child in each day of the countdown.  Luckily, I have "Once Upon A Princess" that has three bag cutouts to choose from.  I made them just big enough to fit four pieces of candy.  I then cut out numbers to correspond with the days left until Christmas from my "Pooh Font Set" and turned them into stickers.  Assembling 24 tiny bags was quite the timely task....taking me a whoopin' 3 hours to complete!!  I used tacky glue to keep the bags held together.  I tried a glue stick, but she wasn't stickin'!   While the glue was drying on the bags, I had to come up with a way to hang or display the bags of candy!  I have several spools of ribbon (it's becoming a bit of an obsession!) so I found one that was very neutral and decided to hang the bags from it.  My initial thought was to use the holes cut into each side of the bag and string them up....but those holes are very tiny!  I ran up to the Dollar General and bought some plain clothes pins (50 for $1).  At first I was going to use them as is....but since my tree is decorated in green, red and gold.....and I made the bags in red and green....it only seemed appropriate to make a mess and apply gold glitter to each and every clothes pin I planned on using!  I of course, used Modge Podge to keep the glitter in place.

Once everything was dry, I filled the bags with the candy, nailed the ribbon to the walls and hung the bags with their clothes pins.  I think it turned out great! I can't wait to get it started this evening!!

Let me know what you think of my finished product!  And don't forget to pin the things you love on Pinterest!!!