Diy Minimalist Advent Calendar With Non Candy Ideas And A Free Printable

Every year for the last couple of years I’ve always ventured into making an advent calendar for my family. But every year creeps up and before I know it we are halfway through December. So this year I decided you know what. I’m making it anyways.

I didn’t really plan much for it and kinda just kept it simple. You can easily make this with material you have around the house. I used wrapping paper we got for this year. But you can easy use old sheet music, newspaper, magazines or book pages. Even all them together would look adorable.

I’ve made printable numbers for you to use and kept them nice and simple and Black and White so they will easily match any theme of paper you decide to go with.

Now onto how to make this advent calendar…


You will need:

  • Paper of choice
  • Glue stick
  • Card stock
  • Printable numbers (found below)
  • Tape
  • Scissors

To Make:

  1. Cut your paper of choice to various rectangles
  2. Fold in the edges to create a smaller rectangle or square (folding it makes it thicker/firmer so it won’t roll up). And glue them down
  3. Cut pieces of white card stock smaller then the finished paper that’s been cut and glued.
  4. Glue the card stock to the back (this will be what your write your daily tasks onto)
  5. Cut out the numbers from my printable below or make your own if you’d like. Glue to the front
  6. Write down an event to do each day on the back on the white card stock. I plant to put the year and the items so each year I can add a new one but see what we had done the year before.
  7. Tape to the wall or hang with string and clothes pins.

Advent Calendar Ideas

Because we aren’t big on candy or gifting things randomly our advent calendar is full of experience type gifts we can do as a family. I’ve listed the items we’ve included in ours and will add more as the years go on and we do different things.

  1. Make cookies
  2. Play a board game
  3. Write Santa a letter
  4. Do a winter scavenger hunt
  5. Read a Christmas book
  6. Color Christmas coloring pages
  7. Watch a Christmas movie
  8. Wrap a Christmas gift
  9. Make homemade hot cocoa
  10. Build gingerbread houses
  11. Go play in the snow
  12. Make s’mores
  13. Make paper snowflakes
  14. Make garland
  15. Bake and Decorate sugar cookies
  16. String popcorn
  17. Drove around and look at lights
  18. Watch Rudolph the red nose reindeer
  19. Random act of kindness
  20. Pick a toy to donate
  21. Write a Christmas card
  22. Wear matching pajamas
  23. Pick out a new Christmas ornament
  24. Take a family selfie
  25. Merry Christmas!

I hope you and your family really enjoy making this and doing all the fun activities. If you have any fun things you think I should add to my list for next year or anyone who can where for the list. Comment below and let me know!

If you’d like to snag this free printable of numbers for your advent calendar then scroll to the bottom of this post and join me tribe. You’ll be emailed a welcome message with the password and link to access my free resource library full of all the things. I don’t spam you… promise!

Thank you for stopping by and be sure to come back often to see what else I’ve been making and sharing.

Until Next time, Live a life you love.

Xo Jessica!

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