November is DIY-Adventcalendar-month
... the craziness of our family tradition
Since I can remember, we always got a home-made advent calendar from our mom, one to each of her daughters.
She would craft it herself each year and be very thoughtful what to put into each day. We wouldn’t just get candies, but little cute toys and such as well.
This tradition still sticks until today, being in our mid thirties! She sends us each a calendar to wherever we are, with many amazing cute gifts in each day, practical, sweet and full of love.
At some point, my sister and I decided to also make an advent calendar to our mom, so every year we have been preparing something for her too.
Last year, since my sister moved here to Sweden, and our parents lost their two daughters to another country ;), we also decided to make a calendar for our dad, the first time ever! AND a joint calendar for both of them!
…well, maybe you can see why I called it the “craziness” now :D.
So, what I have been spending the majority of my time in this month of November is, to make all kinds of different advent calendars:
One for mom, one for dad, one for my godson, one for my sister and three more for very close friends and people in my life. So in total 7 advent calendars :D
And I LOVE this so much! It is a lot of fun, because many of them did not (and still do not) expect anything ;). It included secret Saturday-morning deliveries, sending a package to another country & a hand-drawn advent calendar.
This is why I am also sending this Newsletter in the afternoon of the 1.12.2025 instead of Sunday, so they all had time to arrive & be delivered ;).
Because I love this so much & I think home-made presents are the best, I share with you the calendars I did, maybe you get some inspiration for next year :)
First off, our moms advent calendar: its a christmas centipede :). It is basically a huge tube made out of christmas fabric, stuck to a christmas-centipede head and then the presents are put into it & separated by treads with two pearls on each end, representing the feet. And we added pins with numbers to each part of the body:
Then ,the second calendar is for our dad. He is more tricky to give presents to, so we usually get him special chocolates & candies & some fun gadgets. We did order a cute santa-village advent calendar where we could add the chocolates into carton-boxes forming trees, presents etc, but it unfortunately did not arrive in time…
So we had to improvise and decided to get christmas fabric, cut it out into circles and then pack each day into those circles as mini-presents. We added hear paper-ct hears with the numbers on strings to each bag. Looking like that in the end:
Next on, my godsons advent calendar :). Since I became a godmother last year, I decided I will transfer this tradition to my godson, cos I always had lovely memories with it.
This year, with 2,5 years old, he is getting his second advent calendar and I had two options for it, luckily, cos one did not arrive in time, so it all turned out perfectly well.
I got fabric bags & packed each of the presents into them, its a very simple way of doing it, but each present is something cute, or funny, or personal or also some sweets.
I used little mini-clothepins with hearts and the numbers on them to put on each bag, which can be hanged somewhere.
It looks like that in the end:
Now, coming to the advent calendar for my sister and some of my dearest souls I have the honor to share my life with now. Three of them were physical ones, the last one I decided to draw myself digitally & send it out every day.
Here are the three physical ones:
I decided to write down 24 personal messages to each one of them, sharing what I love & appreciate about them and our relationship, so they know why they are so special to me.
Then I made mini-envelopes, cut them out, folded them, glued them together. Then I made mini papers as mini-letters for the envelopes. I painted them myself and then wrote each sentence on each piece of paper (4x3cm in size), added them into the envelopes and closed them with a heart sticker.
The nI glued them all randomly on a piece of paper and labelled them with numebrs 1-24. Et voila! Done:
Last but not least, as I love to draw and keep memories in mind via small, cute, illustrated visuals, I decided the last advent calendar will be exactly that :)
Here you can see the first illustration I am planning to send out on the 1st of December:
That is it for today from me to you :)
Sharing a bit of my human-ness activities this month. I decided it is worthy to write about these things, because I don’t want it to become forgotten, how we can impact people in our lives by lovely gestures.
It is not with huge & expensive presents. It is not with the most fancy & perfect things and material gadgets.
It is those cute, self-made things like those, where we put our time, effort & thoughts into, and share them with others, that will in the end make a huge difference in the world I think!
We are wired for human-to-human connections and any way we can find to connect to others is worthy! It doesn’t have to be a calendar like that.
It can be a random note, a letter sent by mail, a cute message, a sweet candy as a gift from travels that can make another person feel valued and cared for!
Would love to hear about your family traditions and how you make people feel loved, maybe I could implement them somehow :)
I wish you all a beautiful advent time and a great last month of the year 2025!
Love,
Daria