Hello, Sugar Bee Crafts readers! I’m thrilled to be here today sharing one of my favorite kinds of holiday projects… a multitasking one! Check out how I put together a Thankful Board for the month of November that turns into an Advent Calendar in December.
I’m Shelly from Dolen Diaries where you get a peek into the life of the Dolens…projects we make, recipes we love, things I love to do with my kids, and how we are making our house a home. I have to say that I am loving this project! Let me show you how it works!
It all started with this sad, old bulletin board that we took out of my oldest son’s bedroom. He wanted to toss it but I hated to see something that just needed a little makeover go to waste!
I spray painted the frame Kylon’s metallic color Nickel. I didn’t tape off the cork because it was covered with ugly scribbles, holes, and nicks. I found a roll of cork that had an adhesive back. With a quick roll out and a few snips the ugly was nice and pretty again.
The roll of cork wasn’t as wide as my bulletin board so I needed to add a little extra trim to cover the gap. I got my trim from a salvage shop for a dollar! I feel like I got a lot of look for a $1.00!
I love the look of these gift tags. There is something so sweet and simple about them. I choose the kraft paper ones for the Thankful Board and plain white for Advent. Expresso brown ink seemed like the perfect choice for the kraft paper tags and I’m a sucker for red and white for Christmas so that was a no brainer. I stamped numbers 1-30 on the kraft paper tags and 1-25 on the white tags.
To hold each tag on the board I used clear push pins that I hot glued a little bling on the ends of. I’m a mama of all boys so I look for every opportunity to add a little sparkle here and there.
Here are all of the Thankful tags on the board. I have to say that I LOVE it! I kind of want to keep the numbers up all year around. I think it just looks so cool and graphic!
On the backs of the tags, I write the year and at least one thing we are all thankful for each day. I love having conversations with the kids about the things they are thankful for. I love hearing what they come up with! I think it will be really special to revisit our blessings next year.
Now onto, the Advent board.
I found this fabulous list of daily readings from the Jesus Storybook Bible (I pinned it on my holidays Pinterest board if you want to check it out) that I really want to do as a family each day in Dec. so I wrote the chapter title for each day on the back of the tags 1-24.
So far that’s all I have put on the back of the Advent tags. Last year, I made the mistake of making pre-planning all of our Advent activities before December even started. We ended up switching things around a lot and it drove me crazy having to cross things out and rewrite. This year we are going to brainstorm Advent activities as a family on our way to visit family for Thanksgiving. We’ll use the list we come up with as a guide to plan the month out as we go. I’m going to add the year in front of all the activities as I write them so we can look back on those too!
Thanks so much for having me! I would adore it if you would pop over to Dolen Diaries and say hello!
