Advent Calendar made of tea bags

Today, when it's all about copying someone else's ideas, I can proudly say that we did something that was originally my idea. I've thought of it back in September and I could hardly wait time before Christmas so we can start to make it, so I was collecting tea bags the entire fall season.

Tutorial for making the Advent Calendar out of tea bags

You'll need scissors, a cardboard box and some glue (this time I used UHU Glue Pen, by now it's doing well, we'll see when the kids start to open the bags on the calendar).

I cut the box into the desired shape and arranged tea bags , before pasting, just  to see which way would be the best. I've turned the bags inside out, so that they would be white and then wrote the dates on them. My initial plan was to fill the bags wiht mini candy bars, but I think kids today eat too much candy anyway and that finding candies would not be anything special to them, so that's why I've inserted a piece of paper with the activities for each day in each bag. Sometimes it's one, sometimes I plan more activities, depending on whether it's a weekend or a weekday, or whether we have anything else planned for the day, like going to a birthday party, etc. In any case, in the next few weeks I will be writing about these activities.

I know that it is not common to include December 25th in the Advent calendars, but we plan something special for the day as well, therefore, it's in the calendar.

I've used  fancy paper scraps to wrap it in. Besides cardboard boxes, you can use some old registers, or a softer cardboard, but in this case, the calendar can not stand alone as in the picture below.

This is how it looks like after The Big Girl decorated it the way she likes it. The thumbnails are cut from catalogues, and a special pleasure for her were the stickers, used for closing the bags.

 Need more good ideas for making an advent calendar? Look here.

And here's where I am linking this time: