Make Your Own Simple Chocolate Advent Calendar

My kids have always loved their chocolate advent calendars. It’s one of our most treasured holiday traditions, one that began when I was a kid and my parents bought the colorful, chocolate-filled calendars at the German butcher shop. Now you can get them at import stores like World Market, but since we don’t live anywhere near one of those and the chocolate inside those mass marketed ones isn’t too tasty, we started making our own. My sister came up with the idea a few years ago and the tradition stuck. We usually make ours the day after Thanksgiving and everyone from my four year-old nephew to my 16-year-old daughter loves making these. Here’s how you can make your own:

Simple Chocolate Advent Calendar Supplies:

- Cardboard (I use old cereal or gift boxes)

- Rectangle of craft felt (we found some at Michael’s that had sticky backing, otherwise you will need glue)

- Scissors

- Hot glue gun and glue sticks

- Permanent marker for writing numbers on your chocolate wrappers

- CHOCOLATE (we used silver kisses, but you could use anything you like)

Using your felt rectangle as a size guide, cut out a simple tree shape with a trunk at the bottom, cut out a matching piece of cardboard. Peel off adhesive back or glue felt to cardboard, number chocolates 1-24 with permanent marker, use hot glue to adhere to felt. If you arrange your chocolates randomly, you still have the fun of finding the numbers.

Voila! Simple.