Saints of Advent Countdown Calendar

As much as I love our Jesse Tree, I'm completely enamored with the tiny little Saints of Advent Christmas Countdown Calendar we made this year.













I started with 24 little matchboxes which cost me under $2. I masking-taped a stack of eight of them together, three times, and then glued and taped the three stacks of eight together. Then I cut pretty scrap-booking card stock in strips to cover the sides, and a square of the same pretty paper--a little bigger than the square of matchboxes so I could fold the edges over the sides--for a back to keep the "drawers" from falling out the other side.





Before I glued all the pretty papers on, Robert spray-painted each of the little "drawers" gold for me, as well as the face of the "chest." After I glued all the boxes together and glued the papers on, I just tied a pretty ribbon around to finish it off.










Next I found icons of each of the saints of Advent, St. Edmund Campion for December 1, St. Bibiana for December 2, St. Francis Xavier for December 3, and so on. I coped and pasted them into this document and printed them all on card stock. Caeli helped me cut them all out and trim them to fit each little matchbox drawer.

Then we slipped them back into the little "chest" of matchboxes, starting with St. Edmund in the back left and moving from left to right forward with each saint until we ended with Sts. Adam and Eve in the front right corner.










Then each day of Advent we carefully lift up on the drawer that contains the saint of the day. (I may end up taping little ribbons to the backs of each drawer to make pulling them up easier.) I plan to print out little strips of paper with a prayer to each saint on it, to keep in the little drawer for us to say with our grace before meals. I thought it would also be neat to hang each little picture drawer on the tree, but for now we'll just keep them all together in our little matchbox chest.