Christmas Craft - Chalkboard Christmas Countdown

This year I wanted to make an advent calendar like this with little notes inside for different Christmas  activities but H is not old enough to read/understand and enjoy the activities. So I opted for a gift a day kind of advent thing. Still wanting to go with my inspiration (I had some colorful bags left over from her last birthday), I tried to find 25 tiny gifts but there were only few that can fit into those bags. After a lot of thinking, I came up with this idea of using Chalkboard art on a big poster that shows how many days left until Christmas and then a box or basket underneath/ in front of it to hold a gift each day till Christmas. With the help of these free printables as reference, I free handed the writing on both sides of a black foam board. I love using black foam board for chalk art (I used the same to draw a bunch of animals for H's 2nd birthday). They are cheap, can be cut easily to needed size and easy to draw on. One problem, you can't make mistakes, it's almost impossible to erase. Luckily I chose simple design so it wasn't a problem.

Front of the board says "Days until Christmas" and a reindeer with the numbers cut from scrap paper using my SLICE.

Back of the board says "HAVE YOURSELF a Merry little Christmas" (totally copied from the printable) which I can display on Christmas.

PS: I made the above 3 images high resolution so you can save or print if you like.

I love it so much. It makes me happy every time I see it. H is so happy to find her gifts everyday. I have been telling her about the elf (didn't introduce Elf on the shelf physically yet, may be next year) and how he watches and reports her behavior to Santa in Northpole, so she has been good these days.

Few more clicks of this.

Linking this post to Holiday Cheer in the Blogsphere @ Michaela & Cassie's blogs.