Winter Woolens Advent Calendar

First off, I have to admit that none of these socks and mittens are made from wool. I'm pretty sure they contain no wool whatsoever. But "winter woolens" is such a cute phrase! I first read it on SouleMama a few years ago and it has stayed with me ever since. And you are certainly welcome to use wool socks and wool mittens if you make a similar advent calendar.

I've been looking for an advent calendar for about 5 years now, ever since our oldest celebrated her first Christmas. We have a cute poster of a house with numbered rooms and a Santa sticker we move from room to room, but I wanted something that I could stuff candy and little notes into. After seeing lots of beautiful but expensive store-bought calendars, and many, many beautiful but time-consuming handmade calendars, I finally spotted this one using baby socks on Martha Stewart and decided I could easily crank it out in about an hour (shopping time not included)! Here's how I did it (slightly differently than dear Martha):

Materials:

• 24 or 25 holiday baby socks, toddler socks, gloves, and mittens
• 1 or 2 sheets white card stock
• various circle punches (I used a 2" scalloped circle, a 1 1/4" plain circle, and a 1 3/8" plain circle)
• black stamp pad
• various number and letter stamps
• clothes pins (I used standard ones, but those little tiny ones would be awfully cute too)
• elmer's glue or other craft glue
• about 3 yards of jute, twine, ribbon, yarn, or rope (basically, something to hang these little darlings from)

How-To:

1. Punch 24 or 25 circles out of card stock using the various circle punches. I did 25, but I've noticed lots of count-down calendars only go to 24; it's your choice!
   
   
2. Lay the circles out on your work surface in the order you'd like them to go in, then start stamping each circle with a number. I did a mixture of numerals and written-out letters.
   
   
3. Place a single dot of elmer's glue on each clothes pin, then gently stick on the numbered circles. Set them aside to dry.
   
   
4. Put your twine (or whatever you'll be hanging your socks on) up where you want it and make sure it is securely attached. I put some of those 3M sticky hooks on the wall in our entry way, spaced them about 100 inches apart, and tied each end of my twine to a hook.
5. When the clothes pins are dry, use them to hang up the socks in number order. You can fill the socks with Christmas candy, love notes, small ornaments, holiday activity ideas, etc.
   
   

I'm so excited to have this sweet advent calendar in our house this year to help us count down the days until Christmas. And if we get tired of the socks and gloves, or if we need them in the future, we can use the numbered clothes pins for a new advent calendar!