Halloween Advent Calendar {Tutorial & Download}

Don't get me wrong--I absolutely love summer!  I love the warm weather, the carefree attitude, and I treasure all of the family fun in the sun!  But yet I find myself itching for fall.  I am already planning the holidays and definitely gearing up for Halloween!  What better way to anticipate Halloween than with an advent calendar... and a yummy one at that!

Let me introduce you to our Halloween advent calendar!  The idea is that each day of October, you eat a piece of candy and look forward to Halloween!  Mr. Oopsey Daisy doesn't enjoy sweets all that much, so it's just lil' old me!  Eat a piece of candy every day?!  Yep, I can do that!! 

 

I cooked up this project in time for our family reunion.  I wanted to have a crafting "Super Saturday" with my Mom and sisters!!  So I gathered supplies and made them little kits, and we made a few different crafts together one quiet afternoon while the little boys were napping.  (Don't you just love our matching t-shirts?!)  It was fun to sit back and help them craft while I shot pictures!  

We started out with magnetic cookie sheets from the dollar store.  I mod-podged some cute Halloween paper onto the cookie sheet.

The paper didn't quite cover the edges of the cookie sheet, so I mod-podged ribbon strips to create a border on both sides.

I cut strips of scrapbook paper and mod-podged them on to create a calendar grid, 5 rows by 7 columns.

I wanted to be sure that I could tape candy onto my calendar year after year, so I gave the calendar a good coat of mod-podge over the top of it all.

I used the Cricut to cut out an October heading and laminated it for durability.  I threw some magnets on the back and now I have an adorable heading!

Next, I wanted to create cute marble magnets as the numbers on the calendar.  I made these calendar numbers in Photoshop, cut them out and mod-podged them underneath the glass marbles and added magnet tape to the backs of each.  As magnets, I could slide the numbers around to create a new calendar each year.

Not too shabby, eh?  I love the marbled look to them!!

Missing something??  Oh yeah... let's add the candy!!

Whew!  That's one busy calendar, jampacked full of chocolatey goodness!  I found that double stick tape worked best to secure the candy onto the calendar.  I can hardly wait for October 1st to roll around so I can start munching on some of my favorite candy!!!

If you would like to make your own Halloween advent calendar, you can download and print these numbers to create your own magnets!  You can download your own set of numbers here.  

**By the way, I am going to be switching over all of my downloads to Google Docs instead of Scribd.  Thanks to some helpful readers, I have learned that Scribd charges for downloads after a certain period of time.  If you've had troubles downloading my printables in the past, I hope to get this changed over soon! **

Enjoy your weekend!