Paper Stocking Advent Calendar

I love having an advent calendar in my home. It helps to keep the "is it Christmas tomorrow?" questions to a minimum. I made my little calendar 2-3 years ago and it is one of my favorite things to get out for Christmas. It was super simple to make and looks awesome. I've gotten tons of compliments on my calendar.

Sometimes I display it like a garland on some ribbon, or on a dead tree branch as you can see in the picture below. This picture was taken on Thanksgiving and there it is next to the TV and my little guy. Well it kept falling over and I just couldn't get it to stay put. Usually when I opt to display it like this I put it in a really tall vase then fill the base with those floral gems. Well I apparently left my really tall vase in storage in TN.


I was getting pretty fed up with stockings falling off any time my kids went near it. So I looked around for another idea and realized I had some extra garlands {because I don't have any banisters, or columns in AL, sad} so I strung one up across the living room/dining room cased opening. I then used ornament hooks to hang up each of the little stockings.

{and just so you know we keep it real over here in the PD household I didn't bother to clean up the toys, backpack, or the bag of trash the dog is finding really interesting!}

At first I started to hang up the stockings in numerical order but then I realized that it would look odd half way through the month with stockings on only on half of the garland. So I took them down and then put them back up in a random order. Each little stocking holds 2 little Hershey's Kisses (one for each of my kiddos) and a little slip of paper with an activity to do that day. The activities are little things and things already in our calendar {hey, it's not like my kids know!} such as color Christmas pictures, make gingerbread houses, church Christmas party, and picking up Grandma from the airport.

I'm working on the pattern to post tomorrow so you can make your own stocking calendar. I love advent calendars so if you've got one posted on your blog share the link with me, I'd love to see it.