I know it's only the 1st of November, but in about three weeks time you'll be grateful that I started these posts early.

Advent: (n) The coming or arrival, especially of something extremely important.

For Christians, Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day where a candle on an Advent wreath is lit for each week leading up to the celebration of the birth of Jesus.

For most families nowadays, the word 'advent' used around the festive season conjures up chocolate calendars printed with their youngster's favourite television character, some may have a gorgeous 'traditional-style' wooden tree with 24 drawers in, allowing it to be reused each year. And yes, I said '24' because 'advent' means the 'approach of'. It's a way of marking the coming of Christmas Day, and as such should not have a 25th window. This practise of counting down each day was started by German Lutherans at the beginning of the 19th century. Not such a new tradition hey?

We've been making our own simple Advent calendar to use in a few weeks time when December starts.

You'll need:

• coloured foam or card numbers
• 24 boxes*
• coloured, shredded tissue paper
• ribbon*
• 24 'treats'
• cardboard
• glue
• gold paint
• sequins*
• scissors
• paintbrush

Set out the numbers into a numberline up to 24.

Assemble the boxes.

Stick on the numbers to the front of the box.

Place the shredded tissue paper and a treat inside each bag. (I've used a mixture of Christmas tree decorations and chocolate coins). Tie the handles together with a length of ribbon, long enough to tie off the hanging circles (30cm).

Draw four circles with an inner circle in them, creating a hoop shape. Cut them out and stick two together. Once dried, paint both sides with gold and stick gold and silver sequins on.

Tie four lengths of ribbon to the first hoop. Cut four double length strips of ribbon and tie them to the second hoop. Gather all of the eight ends together and tie into a knot. This forms the loop to hang the calendar from. From the first hoop, suspend twelve of the boxes and from the second tie the other twelve. If you arrange this in a random order then it makes it more of a challenge to find the numbers.

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'Counting Down To Christmas' is a craft bloggers link-up held each week in the eight weeks preceeding the big day itself. Each week we will be posting a different Christmas craft activity.

This week, the co-hosts are Rainy Day Mum ~ Mummy Mummy Mum! ~ Life at the Zoo ~ Here Come the Girls ~ The Fairy and The Frog ~ Jennifer's Little World ~ Playful Learners ~ Making Boys Men.