Felt Christmas Tree Countdown

When I was little, we had a felt Christmas tree calendar that my sweet mother made from scratch. It was one of my favorite Christmas traditions!! Even when I was in high school I loved it. I finally made one of my own this year and am looking forward to having this tradition in our home for years to come. :)

Here's how I made it:

The tree:

1. Cut a Christmas tree shape out of a piece of green felt.
2. Cut out a brown piece for the trunk on the bottom.
3. Glue the tree and trunk to a big piece of felt.

The ornaments:

1. Using different colors of felt, cut out Christmas shapes to use for ornaments on your tree. You can have doubles of some ornaments, or just do whatever shapes you want. ***OR If you don't want to do a bunch of different ornaments, you could just cut out circles and have your kids decorate them like ball ornaments! I bet they would love to see the different designs they made as they get older. :)
2. Some of the ornaments I made (some not pictured) are: snowmen, mittens, presents, hearts, penguin, balls, bell, stocking, santa hat, reindeer, christmas tree, gingerbread man, candy canes, gingerbread house, and a star.

Here's what we do:

• I have a Christmas candy jar shaped like a giant ball ornament. Every night I put one of the felt ornaments inside. The boys take turns each morning opening the jar and pulling out the ornament for that day. They get to choose where to put it on the tree, then we pin it to the felt tree with a small sewing pin.
• We do this every morning until Christmas. (Our tradition is to put the star on the top of the tree on Christmas morning.)