You know when you really want to do something you plan really far in advance to get it done? That's me. With everything. But the problem is, life happens. More important things pop up (or out, like a baby - sorry I couldn't resist)

My husband is accustomed to my long list of to dos. He knows that if he gives me a few weeks, months or even a year, that the good ideas stay (well hopefully). He's probably right. This advent is one of those ideas.

I came across Alexis's (from Persia Lou) advent's calendar last fall and really want to make it. But I was pregnant and completely overwhelmed with everything else and did I mention I was pregnant? I'm not the same person when I'm pregnant. Anyway, it made it on my maybe some day we'll have an advent calendar to do list. 

This past September I decided I was going to make it. Yes, I started planning in September, but it wasn't until November that I could even come up for air to even start thinking about it.

 Finally during Thanksgiving break, I dove head in to work on it.

 I finished it on December 4th. The boys had no idea (we've never had one until now) that we were 4 days late in starting. Now I'm finally getting around to blog about it. But that's how I roll because I get distracted really easy by cute little feet, big fluffy chicks and giggly boys and one little girl. 

I digress. Well, not really. They're the reason I made this for. If it wasn't for those sweet little ones, I would probably have nothing to post about. 

DIY Modern Advent Calendar 

credit for idea goes to Alexis from Persia Lou (thanks for sharing your brilliance)

Supplies:

Piece of plywood (mine was about 2'x3'ish)

Stain (optional - to stain stain your plywood if you want it a darker different color)

Painters tape (don't use anything other than frog tape - just trust me)

White Paint

Cup Hooks

Wood Craft Objects for the ornaments (I found mine in November at the Target craft section - seriously such a fun little section)

Heat Transfer Vinyl

First stain your board. Then I decided how big I wanted my tree and placed the painters tape on there. It took up about 3/4 of the board. I used left over house paint and needed about 3 to 4 coats. 

After it was dry I added the hooks. Now I had my hubby help me on this because he does all the mental work for me. If you count, you'll see there are 27 hooks (wait what?) I know, there are only supposed to be 25, but he convinced me it'd look better if it was symmetrical, so we added 2 extra. That means some days will have 2 ornaments. So here are rows 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 5. 

(not pictured above) I sewed the fabric into tubes so that 3 levels would fit perfectly on the board. I then sewed dividers for each day (this was mostly for looks). I then glued with e-600 the fabric on (glued where the dividers would be) 

Now this is where the silhouette came in. 

For the letters I was thinking about painting them on using a stencil. Alexis printed the letters onto fabric using her printer (crazy cool right?) but I didn't trust my printer. However, I had some Heat Transfer Vinyl left over from something, so I decided to do that instead. Honestly, this probably took me a good hour to iron all those numbers on. I love how they all turned out. 

For the ornaments, I painted most of them by hand, some I let the small ones help me with. Some I wanted more detail without spending forever on them, so I just cut out shapes of Mary, Jesus, animals, the wise men and the shepherd to use as a stencil. This stencil was actually great because then Captain Awesome could paint them himself. I loved how the ornaments turned out!

You can see all of them put up on the tree. 

Both boys have really loved putting an ornament up every day on the tree. And some how we made more than 27 so we sometimes put the spare one in the each day so they both can put one up every day. I love how they like to look at each of the ornaments and how orderly Captain Awesome insist they go on. I told them they don't have to go in any spot, but he insists they do go hook by hook and row by row. 

And make sure you check out my fellow friend bloggers and their fun Silhouette Holiday Projects: