[homemade wall advent calendar]

When I saw the trees in this photo, an idea came to me to make a large wall advent calendar. This is the beginning of it. The trees are cut from poster board. The largest one is about 27" (70cm) tall. I found a picture of an empty manger online and printed it out. I'm not too happy about the "hill" the manger is on, I might still change it. But the idea is that each day I'll add more to the calendar and on Christmas morning, Sienna will find baby Jesus lying in the manger and the star of Bethlehem in the sky above Him.

The theme for this calendar is "forest Christmas" but who knows what it will end up looking like by Christmas. So far I've printed these to add to it:

I found the perfect baby photo to be Jesus, didn't I? And yes, I'm totally using photos I'm finding online. I'm sure the owners of the photos won't mind since this is for a good cause: to make one little girl super excited and happy about Christmas. :)

Sienna loves animals so I thought it would be fun to add all sorts of animals in the forest. Not just forest animals. Little treats and surprises will be found in the forest too.

Another idea is to have your child(ren) draw the animals (or Nativity characters if you want a more traditional Nativity scene) instead of printing them out.

I'll come and show you how the calendar is progressing throughout December.

Fun! :)