Homemade Advent Calendar

Back in June, or maybe even earlier, my mom and I started finding lol dolls and accessories at thrift stores and yard sales.  Then, Haley started finding some too! We split the findings between Grace, Juliet, and Leah.  The pile was impressive, but I didn't know how I was going to present it to the twins.

Fast Forward to November, when Aldi put out their advent calendars.  This year, they have so many adorable options: Lego, Harry Potter, dog treats, cheese, wine, chocolate, cat accessories, the list goes on and on.  They are expensively priced (at least when you multiply them by 5) so, I thought: what if I made one for them, using the lol dolls we already have? 

A bout of illness passing through our house had me delay my plans, but the next time I went to Aldi, I saw the dividers for candles! Bingo.

The box that William's nerf gun came in was the perfect size!  The larger, brown frame fit in the box without gap.  I added small cardboard inserts to enlarge the red one to fit the same.

I laid the cross hatching on the top where it would sit in the box and traced it with a pencil.

Once that was finished, I cut doors in each rectangle.

I did have to pull a second box and make a small set of doors, since I was 4 short in the nerf box.  It wasn't nearly as cute as the tall one, but I made it work.

The next step was to wrap the back and sides of the boxes.

My mom had sorted the dolls and accessories into 25 'coordinating' bags and labeled them, so once those came over all that was left was to number the doors and drop them in!

We used school glue and 3 layers of tissue paper to cover up the doors.  Then Emily used the pictures above to label the doors*.  

The few days they had to wait to open them were "sooo long" according to the twins, but now they are already on day 4 and have a few goodies, and many doors left to open!

Their collection so far:

J-G

later days

*the numbers are one off, because my mom included the container in her count, and the containers wouldn't fit in the calendar. So, on that day they had a 'scavenger hunt' tag to go find the lockers.  As a super fun bonus, the lockers actually lock! When I was scoping them out at them at the thrift shop, I was using my keys to try and crack them.  Turns out the keychain bottle openers that Billy made a few years ago were a perfect key to unlock them!