One thing I love most about the seasons coming is how we get to do our family traditions again, and create new ones! Now that our girls are bigger, we can introduce pumpkin carving to our oldest, and take our youngest trick or treating. I wanted to do a lot of fun crafts this month, and wanted to make an advent calendar to hang and display our bucket list that we can use year after year.
I saw this idea on A Beautiful Mess and I followed their tutorial to make it. It took about 2 days to put together, working at night for about 2-3 hours each night. Even though I made mine for the month of October leading up to Halloween, you can create a bucket list calendar like this for any month or season.
The colors I used here would be perfect for a November/Thanksgiving advent calendar too! I am going to be making another one for Christmas that I will be sharing at the end of November, so stay tuned for that 🙂
I ended up taking it a step further and documenting each day’s activity on my polaroid so we will have a photo to look back on each year! Here’s a tutorial for making your own fall themed advent calendar:
What you need:
Felt in different colors
(you will need 3×3 squares cut out for each day of the month you’re making the calendar for. In this case, I did 31 squares).
One larger piece of felt or fabric to hot glue the squares onto
(I grabbed half a yard of white felt at Joann’s)
Embroidery thread in various colors for the numbers and an embroidery needle
(I chose a sparkly silver and a lighter cream)
A thin wooden dowel so you can hang your calendar
Yarn to hang the dowel with
Any embellishments you want to sew or hot glue on
(I chose buttons, paper flowers, gold stars, and glitter stickers to spell out Happy Halloween at the top.)
A hot glue gun, sharp scissors, and a level
How to make it:
Start buy cutting the felt squares out. Do your best to make sure they are straight lined and even cuts! Once you have all your felt squares, you can lay them out on the larger piece of fabric and space them out to your liking.
Once you have your felt squares laid where you’d like them, you can place the embellishments onto them. I laid everything out first so I could move pieces around and group buttons together before I sewed them on. Once I had them how I liked, I started sewing!
If you don’t know how to embroider or sew, you can always stamp or write the numbers onto a button or larger embellishment and then hot glue them all down.
I only sewed the numbers of the month 1-3 times every row, I did not sew on every single day. Thought it was more fun that way! Plus my fingers got sore from all the stitching through felt haha! My numbers started out big and beautiful and then got smaller the further down in the month I went hahaha.
Once you have everything sewn or glued on, it’s time to get your calendar made! You will want to create each square into a pocket. Hot glue each side of the square to the fabric back, leaving the top open so you can insert your bucket list item on a piece of paper once the calendar is finished.
Then you will secure the dowel! For this part I suggest using a level so you can make absolutely sure your dowel is sitting straight on the back and that it will hang straight. Turn your calendar over, fold the fabric over the dowel where you want it to hang, and secure the fabric down with hot glue.
Now time to wrap the dowel with yarn! You can either wrap it all the way like I did, or you can only use the yarn for the part that will hang. If you wrap it all the way, use a tiny dab of hot glue every so often so that the yarn stays secure.
Once you’re done, you can create your bucket list by writing on slips of paper and sliding them into each pocket of the month.
Do you spy my hidden Mickey buttons?! Of course I had to sneak one in for the day we are going to Downtown Disney with family! Usually we go to Disneyland several times a month during the holidays, but since it’s still closed, Downtown Disney will have to do!
I hope you enjoyed this quick and simple Halloween DIY – and if you make this craft yourself, I’d love to see! Just tag me on Instagram (@theminiapartmentblog). Stay tuned for all the fun Halloween DIY’s coming your way in the next few weeks as we countdown to October 31! I’ve got a spooky snack for family night, a fun Halloween drink for parents and kids, and a front porch reveal for spooky decorating while you’re transitioning into Fall decor for November.
Xx, Becca