A bedtime story is always a lovely thing to experience with the youngsters in your life so here’s a way to make it even more special in the run-up to Christmas. Sure you might have already been reading some festive stories together but this thrifty DIY project makes it into a bit of an exciting treat too.
The idea is for children to have a mystery Christmas-themed book to unwrap and read before bed each night of in the run-up to Christmas. In this instance, I’m talking about the 12 days of Christmas, so there’s certainly still time to join in with this festive make and to make your own book advent calendar to use before Christmas this year.
The excitement of this calendar is in the children choosing one book to unwrap each night, not knowing what story is inside the gift wrap. If you have a few children in the family, they can take it in turns to choose and unwrap the book.
You can either wrap up any existing Christmas storybooks you already have or head out to the charity shops or school Christmas fairs this weekend to buy some low-cost secondhand books. The books don’t need to be big, expensive or new, they just need to be a quick festive story for bedtime – how lovely.
I set myself a limit of £1 for really special books, but the majority were priced at just 50p, so my 12 Days of Christmas calendar could have cost a total of just £6.
It’s a good idea to visit independent charity shops in your local area as they have great items to discover (alongside the festive books) and any money you spend with them will have more impact on the charity and will help to keep it running.
Once you’ve gathered together 12 books (or even 24 if you’re doing the whole advent period) you just need to wrap them up and pop them in a festive gift bag or a box, ready for the children to choose one surprise book to unwrap each evening.
There’s no need to buy new gift wrap for this – the more different colours and patterns the better, as it makes the pile look more exciting!
We’ve all got old ends of gift wrap from previous years lying around, haven’t we? And I’ve also reused some paper that I’d kept hold of after it had been used to wrap gifts last year. It couldn’t be a more thrifty project to make!
The fun of this advent is that it’s naturally something that the little ones will be opening in the evening – so it won’t ‘get lost’ amidst their other advent calendars with chocolates and toys that they might be opening in the mornings.
Plus, it signals that it’s time to wind down and go to sleep: youngsters should be in their PJs and ready for bed before they get to choose their mysterious festive-themed book for the night.
This is a project that I’ve done myself this year for my nieces and nephew so I thought I would take some snaps and share this with you in case you fancy making one for your own family this year.
Plus, once you’ve bought the books, you can re-wrap the books after Christmas (again using this year’s used gift wrap that you’ve salvaged) and pop them away with the rest of your Christmas decorations, ready for next year.
If you have friends or family members who also have young children in the family, you could each create a book advent calendar and then next year you can swap the whole set of books to rewrap, so each family has a whole ‘new’ selection of stories to read during advent.
If you don’t have time to gather together the books this year, why not keep an eye out for festive books throughout the year and put together this advent calendar ready for next year? I’m planning to add another 12 books to our collection so that it will run for the whole advent period from the 1st December next year.
I’ve been collecting books for just a couple of weeks but I spotted some appearing in the charity shops as early as September, so you could just buy one 50p book each week during the months before Christmas and you’ll have bought enough for a whole advent calendar before you know it. And you’ve spread the cost too!
I hope you have a fun time hunting for books, re-using your wrapping paper and reading those festive stories in the run-up to Christmas. Please leave me a comment to let me know how you countdown to Christmas in a thrifty way, I’d love to hear about your homemade advent calendars!
Here is my previous DIY Christmas tree advent calendar if you want to check out that project for more thrifty inspiration too. 🙂
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