One of the holiday traditions both my son and I look forward to each year is the advent calendar. He loves having something to open every day in December and I love watching his anticipation each day.

I’ll admit that for the last two years, we’ve been using calendars that are simple and have a piece of chocolate behind each door. This year, I wanted to do something different. Something more personal. I know he likes the little treat every day and I am happy to still give that to him but I wanted to make sure he doesn’t grow up thinking that opening an advent calendar just means getting chocolate.

So I decided to make a tag with pockets for each day. In each pocket, I put a card with a little message. Every night, he will take out the appropriate card and do whatever’s on it.

Here’s what one tag looks like:

My tags are constructed very simply. Since there are 25 days, I decided to pick 5 different color schemes for the tags and pockets and I repeated each five times. Here are the basic steps I followed for each tag:

1. Take manila tag, adhere to background paper, cut.
2. Ink edges with dark brown chalk ink.
3. Cut pocket, ink its edges using the same ink.
4. Stitch around the tag, stitching the pocket in place in the process.
5. Embellish.

That’s it. Simple as pie.

Here’s how they look altogether.

If you look carefully, you can see that the color combinations repeat but because I embellished each slightly differently, they don’t look exactly the same.

Here is a closer look at each tag:

All of the papers and embellishments are from The Girls’ Paperie. Almost everything is from the Tinsel and Twig line but there are a few items from the Toil and Trouble line.

For the insides, I made a 2×2 square which says “celebrate the season” in tiny font. (You can download it here.)

I then printed them out and punched out the squares. I stapled ribbon to the back of each square.

Finally, I wrote each day’s item on the tag.

Some of the items are purely for him (like the one in the photo) and others are family-related like “give your brother a hug.” And yet others are more community-wide. Like helping a friend at school.

Here’s what the tags look like with the papers in them.

I’ll admit that this project was a bit time consuming, but mostly because I spent a lot of time picking the simple embellishments on each tag. I love the fact that I can keep the same system year after year and even use the same squares. Or I can change them around as my kids grow up. I can even put two squares in one pocket so each of my kids can draw one.

Flexible, simple, pretty.

And here is the list of all the items on the tags:

S=self, F=family, C=community

1. You get a new book today (S)
2. We make paper snowflakes and hang them around the house (F)
3. Donate a book to someone (C)
4. Make a card for your teacher (C)
5. We play cards or any other game you want today. (S)
6. Give a present to someone at school today (C)
7. Pick one toy to donate (C)
8. Read your brother a book. (F)
9. You get to have some hot cocoa today. (S)
10. You get to stay up for one extra hour tonight (S)
11. Family movie night! (F)
12. Create a piece of art for a sick kid at the hospital. (C)
13. Leave a present on someone’s doorstep. (C)
14. We all go for a walk in the neighborhood and look at the lights. (F)
15. Make a card for one of our neighbors. (C)
16. Pick a book for mommy to read to you. (S)
17. Help mommy wrap presents. (F)
18. Let’s have a picnic under the Christmas tree! (F)
19. You spend one hour however you like. We all do what you want. (F)
20. Make a Christmas surprise book for your daddy and read it to him. (F)
21. Family game night tonight. (F)
22. You get 30 mins extra wii time today. (S)
23. Bake cookies and deliver to local police station and fire station. (C)
24. Open one Christmas present (S)
25. WE love you. Open all your presents!! (Christmas Day.)

This was originally posted at writeclickscrapbook.com for the holiday season.