Days Til Christmas...

Way back in November I saw this and decided that I wanted to make one of my own!! Luckily Joe had been cleaning out the garage (one of his never ending tasks!) and dug out these old cupboard doors, which were exactly what I needed!

First I dusted them off since they had been collecting dust in our disaster garage!

Then I painted it black with some magnetic paint... Although this paint didn't do what I had originally planned...

While the paint is drying you take your little paper mache boxes... Mine were from Walmart and Michaels... I cleaned both stores out... Maybe I wasn't the only one doing this! I wish I had a little more shape variation, but it didn't really matter too much!

Then pick out your fun scrapbooking paper in several different patterns!!

and using an Exacto knife to cut the scrapbook paper- I just outlined the boxes...

and glued the paper to the boxes using this stuff!

Then I used a sharpie and put the numbers on the boxes... That was after I figured out how I wanted the boxes to be layed out! This actually took a lot longer than you would think! I didn't want any of the same shapes next to each other or the same pattern of paper etc.. so it took some arranging!

Then came the fun part... I painted Mod Podge on top of each box to seal it... If you've never used this stuff you should try it out.. It's super cool! This was the first time I've ever used the stuff and I can see using it for a lot of fun stuff!

Finally I glued all the boxes to the frame... Added the "Days Til Christmas" on top and the ribbon to hang it !! A fun little advent calendar for Christmas.. and like the blogger before me... I put the kids vito-bears inside the boxes for their treat! Maybe next year I'll be organized enough to put little projects/fun stuff we can do together inside too! Such as, "make gingerbread houses" or "Go look at Christmas lights" Two things we still plan on doing before Christmas!!