Christmas Traditions: Advent Calendar

When I was a kid, one of my favorite Christmas traditions was waking up each morning and running to the kitchen with my brother where cardboard advent calendars waited for us to open them each morning. We would pry the perforated doors open to reveal thin little chocolate squares inside. Most of the time, the advent calendars were from the local grocery store so the chocolate tasted strangely sweet with a hint of cardboard, but we didn't care. Christmas was the only time of the year when my parents would let us start our day with chocolate without a second thought.

I wanted to carry on the tradition of the advent calendar with my children, but I wanted a calendar that I could put my own candy or little trinkets into, something that I could personalize myself (without the cardboard flavoring.) As I was shopping the after Christmas sales last year, I came upon this at Marshall's:

It was the cutest wooden advent calendar AND it was marked down to $20.00! I couldn't resist. I snapped it up, and then it waited patiently in my attic for a year until I finally dug it out on the 1st and filled it with Hershey's kisses.

Did you know that a Hershey's kiss candy cane has exactly 24 Hershey's kisses in it? Well, mine did anyway, which worked out perfectly for the 24 advent days.

Haley loved it. Once I showed her how to open up the little wooden door, she was thrilled to find the little colorful wrapped chocolates. And actually, she got got a little TOO excited because when I woke up the next day, I discovered that she had scooted a stool up to the counter and opened 4 of the doors on the bottom row to eat the chocolate (some with the wrappers partially on.) She would've eaten more too if my husband hadn't caught her in the act. Sneaky girl.

I can't blame her though, I may have snuck a couple myself...