Some links in this post contain affiliates. Read our full disclosure policy here.

It’s becoming a bit of a tradition, this 🥰

I first made a DIY advent calendar in 2017 when I got fed up seeing the £100s of pounds being spent on the likes of Liberty London beauty calendars.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re beautiful… But their introduction did make me question, is this really what the run up to Christmas is about?

I started to create a different kind of advent calendar to celebrate moments when you open the calendar doors every day rather than more ‘stuff’. Moments like roasting chestnuts, baking mince pies, making a Christmas cocktail together, doing one thing daily that gets you feeling happy and Christmassy.

As a result, Neil and I have the best Decembers ever. We feel like we make the most of the festive season and have developed our own traditions along the way, baking together, making pickled onions or jam, making our own Christmas cards, getting drunk on mulled wine…

This year has been turbulent to say the least and I really believe having this advent calendar will focus us and divert our attention to the joyful moments Christmas brings – and switch off the news for a few hours.

I kept this year’s DIY simple – so simple in fact, that even a young toddler could get involved in making the calendar and it doesn’t take too long either.

If you’d like to recreate your own version, I’ve linked all the bits I bought below. You can see a list of activities we’ve done in previous years here and here – but there’ll be plenty more activity lists on Pinterest. And the final tip from me is to plan out which dates you’ll be doing each activity and put them in your calendar. That way you can make sure you’ve got bits in when the door opens.

Making our DIY Christmas Advent Calendar 2020

Supplies we used…

Click the images to be taken to the websites we bought these. The gingerbread house kit doesn’t come with extra string. We just used parcel string, but you could also use garden twine.