Make Your Own Advent Calendar!

Make your own easy wood painted reusable advent calendar to countdown to Christmas! 

I’ve been wanting a re-usable advent calendar for a few years now, and this is the year! I’m moving toward a mid-centuryish aesthetic with my decor, and I want to start taking my Christmas decor that direction too.

So today I’m going to show you how to decorate your own wood advent calendar to go with your Christmas decor. And you can fill the drawers with whatever you like. I’m using this free Jesus Storybook Bible Advent Calendar for my girls this year.

Unfortunately no chocolate in ours- for a few years in a row Zoe the Wonder Dog had a Christmas Eve tradition of going to the emergency vet to have her stomach pumped. Peter would bring home chocolate for my Christmas sock- the good kind. And she would get into it while we were at Christmas Eve service. One year she ate a whole Costco bag of truffles! Thankfully she’s always been fine, but now the chocolate is hidden up high in the kitchen.

What you need:

• unfinished wood advent calendar
• acrylic paint
• paint brushes
• garbage bag or something to protect your tabletop
• wood stain
• sharpie or paint pen

How to paint an advent calendar

1. Paint the drawer fronts.

I painted the fronts- and then ended up going back and painting the whole outside of each box. As you can see, mine are white and red. They’ll need at least 2 coats of paint. It dries quick.

2. Paint or stain the knobs.

I stained my knobs to match the calendar frame. They could be gold, whatever you like.

3. Paint or stain your frame.

I did a single coat of walnut-colored stain on mine. There’s some uneven color inside a few of the boxes because of the glue, but it won’t really show once the drawers are in place.

4. Write numbers.

This step takes a little practice. I just used a sharpie and did a faux calligraphy font. You could use a paint pen, or even stickers if you want a different color. I’m loving this Hand Lettering workbook. I messed up my pattern and had to paint over a few of my numbers. I found that no amount of white paint would cover the sharpie, but white-out did the trick in one coat!

5. Replace the drawers.

After everything has a few hours to dry, you can put the drawers back into the frame. 

6. Fill the calendar.

That’s it! Enjoy and Merry Christmas!