The McGowan Foursome: {Advent Calendar}

I was inspired by a few things on Pinterest recently and decided to combine two of the things I saw.
1. An Advent Calendar {We didn't have one. Unless you count the paper chains I have my kiddos do}
2. I saw an idea on pinterest to have your Advent days be experiences and not things.

I thought this board would be perfect to clip the experiences to for each day. Doing it this way would make me better organize our calendar and purposely plan some of the things we already do around the Holidays anyways.

Some of my ideas are:

going to see Christmas Lights {Fantasy Lights} go to a Christmas Program {or 2 or 3} read a Christmas Story, bake cookies, make teacher gifts, etc. etc.

I started off with a 46 in. pine board, because that's what I had on hand. If a shorter board were used, smaller numbers would need to be used as well.

First, I primed since I was working with a bare pine board.

Next, I painted it a blue color by Glidden. I have a few blue paint testers that I've been testing on a few walls and I really wanted to use what I already had. I also knew I wanted it to be blue and red, so it worked out perfect!

Now onto the really tedious part. I painted 2" cothespins white. ALL 24 OF THEM.

{note: anyone who may want to make this, look for and buy white clothespins, not sure if that's an option though}.

I painted the top and 2 sides of each clothespin. I also painted basically any part that would show once glued to the board.
I glued the side not painted to the board.

Since I knew I wanted to make this blue and red, I found some cute red polk a dot paper, measured and cut out 24 of them. Cutting 24 out was actually really easy, since I figured out that only 2 lines of polk a dots would fit onto a clothespin. I modge podged each of the papers to the top of each clothespin.

Next, I layed all 24 clothespins out and tried to figure out how far apart to space them. I measured "about" 2in. apart. Before I glued them down I drew a line using the level to ensure my clothespins stayed straight and level down the entire board.

I used E-6000 to glue the clothespins

Now the fun part, that didn't start off so fun for me. I originally bought red paint thinking I was going to paint all 24 numbers {what was I thinking}. Plan B, I thought I could buy a stencil and trace/paint the numbers{didn't find any stencils that I loved}. Plan C, use number rub-ons {couldn't find any big enough}. Plan D, wander around Ben Franklin aimlessy looking for something, anything really at this point. I asked a woman working if she had red vinyl or rub-on numbers, they didn't....urg! But, she did say you could di-cut your own if you buy a roll of vinyl. The only bummer was that they do sell some vinyl colors by the sheet, but not red. So I decided on this route, not realizing just how cool it was going to be. Di-cutting vinyl just opened up a whole new world for me {decorating and teaching wise...I'm a Kindergarten Teacher}.

I decided on di-cutting 1 1/2 in. numbers and cut a few extra of each just in case I made a mistake.

I layed out all the numbers on the board and had to figure out how to get them on straight and have good spacing. I figured my line worked well the first time for the clothespins, so I drew another one for the numbers. Next I peeled the backing off and rubbed them each on...easy peasy!

I love it and can't wait to work with vinyl and the di-cuts again.

I absolutely love the way my advent calendar turned out. Now I need to work on the experiences to clip on to each day.

I have a few places in mind of where to hang it for the month of December, but I think I need to pull out my other decorations before this gets hung.

Ellee thinks it's for her to learn her numbers. She has come up to it a few times and started pointing and counting each number. I'm excited for her and Jackson to take the paper off each day, we may have to alternate, so they each get turns....didn't think of that until now...oops:)