Silver Ornament Advent Calendar {Christmas Traditions Blog Hop}

Happy Thursday y'all! Today I'm participating in a Christmas Traditions blog hop hosted by Rachel from Like a Saturday. If you're hopping over from House by Hoff, welcome!

Christmas is definitely a holiday that lends itself to lots of traditions - and we certainly have a few! One of my favorites is an Advent calendar. When I was a kid, we used to buy those cardboard ones that had a toy or a piece of chocolate behind a numbered door, and I loved it. There was always great excitement about what would be inside those little doors. 

As I've gotten older, Advent has come to mean so much more than counting down to Christmas day via chocolates and toys. It's a season of anticipation of Jesus's birth and Christians all over the world participate in this time of waiting for the four weeks leading up to Christmas. I love having a time that's set-apart each year to step back and remember the significance of why we celebrate his birth. If you're curious about this idea or want more information, I encourage you to check out this little booklet that a pastor, John Piper, has put together. This year, I'm using the SheReadsTruth Advent series as a guide as well.

Now back to the tradition of the Advent calendar! This year, I decided to make my own that can be pulled out year after year (new tradition!) using my collection of silver ornaments. My parents gave me a silver ornament each year for Christmas and I thought it would be fun to number them for each day of Advent and then put them up one at a time on our tree.

To make the calendar, I used:

• 2'x3' rug
• Piece of scrap moulding
• Ribbon
• Embroidery floss (and needle)
• Small white paper bags
• Large kraft paper tags
• Pinking shears
• Number stamps
• Gold ink

I picked up this cute cable knit rug from West Elm a few years back and it never found a good place in our home so I decided to use it for this project.

I secured a piece of scrap moulding along what would become the top using a few stitches. They're hard to see here since I used white embroidery floss, but I just alternated long straight stitches with stitches over the top. Using a piece of moulding allows this calendar to hang like a tapestry on the wall. You'll see how in a minute :).

Then I made my "ornament holders" using a kraft paper tag and a small white paper bag.

First I cut down the height of the bags using pinking shears so that the kraft tags would stick up out of the top of them.

Then I tied the ornament to the hole in the kraft tag. Makes for quite a cute little package, huh?

Then it was time to number the bags 1-25 for the calendar.

Once I finished numbering them, I sewed them onto the rug by hand using embroidery floss. To hang the calendar, I attached a big green grosgrain ribbon to the edges of the moulding and hung on a big Command hook I had attached to the wall.

Now for some beauty shots of the finished calendar!

I really love how it turned out! Now all my pretty silver ornaments are out on display until they are removed one-by-one, day-by-day.

You can see where it's hanging in our living room on my Christmas home tour from Monday.

Thanks for hopping over to hear about one of my favorite Christmas traditions today! Now it's time to hop on over to Run to Radiance and hear about hers!