While I'm not really a "crafty" person and generally avoid projects that appear to be too messy (aside from Save St. Mary's), I threw caution to the wind and decided it would be fun to make an Advent calendar with my 6-year-old. (And yes, he is in his pajamas in the picture. Bad cold that day.)

I thought I'd share it with you because I realized, when trying to figure the best way of making the calendar, that this particular activity would be especially good for a family with two or more school age children. The more children you have, the less the parent has to do ahead of time. The older children can do the more complicated aspects (like looking for appropriate pictures).

I've been saving up some of my Catholic catalogs in anticipation of some sort of craft project. Last week when I decided it would be a good idea to put together an Advent calendar, I was trying to think of a way that wouldn't require that I do 90% of the work. Not the most attractive way, perhaps, but a simple one. So here's what we did:

1. I cut out a whole bunch of small pictures (saints, crosses, nativity scenes, rosaries, icons, a monstrance, etc.). Many of them were incredibly beautiful. I tried to find pictures most appropriate for Advent. I did all this while the kids were in bed, by the way.

2. Next, I grabbed some pink and purple construction paper and glued the pictures to the paper. After the glue was dry, I cut rectangular shapes around the pictures. Then I folded all these rectangles in half so as to make little doors. These first two steps probably took around two hours, but then again, being fairly late, I wasn't going very quickly.

3. The next day, with my son, I put a dab of paste on each little door so as to hold it shut (he didn't want to catch a glimpse of any of the pictures ahead of time). After I put the paste on the door, I would hand each one to him and he would write the dates on them.

4. As you can see, we pasted all the little doors to the large piece of paper. (I did put faint lines on the paper so the little doors would be vaguely straight.)

5. At the end I had my son put the words on the calendar and I let him decorate the bottom. The parts we did together probably took about an hour.

As it turned out, we had so many of the little door/pictures left (I cut out too many) that we had enough for a "12 Days of Christmas/Epiphany Calendar" (right). Knowing I had too many, I saved the three wise men pictures, some nativity scenes, and baby Jesus pictures for this.

As we open the doors each day the calendar actually looks much more attractive. And who doesn't love the excitement of an Advent calendar? The whole thing, simple as it was to make, has been a huge hit. We plan to make another one next year. He said to me, "Mama, I'm never going to forget this day!" Isn't that funny? Just goes to show, it doesn't always take pain-staking or costly gestures to give your children a sense of satisfaction. Mostly, they just like spending time with their parents.