It's the 1st December, and that means the big countdown to Christmas day, which traditionally is done with an advent calendar.  I've only ever had chocolate advents before, but this year we made our very own wooden one.

The best bit is, we can use this Wooden Advent Calendar year after year, and I look forward to placing different items in each door, changing it each year.

We were given the challenge by Action Storage, retailers of lockers for business, to decorate our very own Wooden Advent Calendar. We did the Locker challenger previous with Action Storage and had fun, and we were super excited to join in on the latest challenge.

They sent us a wooden calendar which is available to buy from Hobbycraft as well as a £20 Hobbycraft gift card, to help buy all the bits we need to decorate it. We then decorated and designed our very own wooden advent calendar.

It's quite sturdy and all the little doors have handles on them, the doors open and close. They stay shut with the little magnets on each door. I wanted a simple design, so we decided to go white.

I painted it completely white and allowed it to dry (it took a couple of coats of paint). Then using some pretty silver stick-on jewels, I made a Christmas Tree. 

I wrapped some copper wired LED lights around the frame of the calendar - I love the soft glow the lights give. And, with a silver pen, I drew the numbers on each door, from 1 to 25 in no particular order.

Finally, I made a little angel using a small wooden peg, some green leafs for wings and gave it a little gold halo using gold coloured pipe cleaner. The angel sits beautifully on top of box 25.

We are really pleased with our Wooden Advent Calendar and look forward to opening each door throughout the month, leading up to Christmas.