The Grown-Up Advent Calendar

Typically when you think advent calendar you think about those little cardboard boxes with doors for each day. When you got the door open, as a kid, there would be a little treat inside. Our advent calendar is just a little different.

It is the grown up version. The idea came up while huddled around a fire pit one weekend. The man has a really rough holiday season at work, the kind of rough work that involves being at work for 17 hour days. The poor guy needed something to get him through the season, enter my genius idea… that’s right I just complimented myself for the idea. An advent calendar made up of airplane bottles, one for each day.  The Man’s brother also wanted to play along so his wife is hard at work getting his done.

The idea came with a set of problems. How would we do it? What would we put the bottles in? How would they be labeled? How would we make each bottle a surprise?

I found these wooden tags at Joanns and painted them. Half of them were painted white and then glazed with pearl and the other half were just glazed with pearl.

After they were dry I stenciled on the numbers and painted them in by hand.

I bought a magnetic board from Joanns. (It is roughly 24″x36″ and is not on their website so I couldn’t link to it.)

Once I bought the bottles I had to find magnets strong enough to hold up the bottles. They are heavier than you would think. Home Depot had the strongest magnets. I used hot glue to start with. It worked for the most part as long as I kept all the magnets away from each other.

The glass bottles are a bit heavier so for those I added 3 magnets to hold the weight.

After the glue dried and was ready to go I wrapped each bottle individually and tied the tags around the top.

The project was certainly not an inexpensive one. The bottles were around $65 for 24. This part could be a lot cheaper if you stick with vodka, or depending on your states liquor tax. The magnetic board was  $15 ($25 before the 40% coupon.) The magnets were about $40 in total! That was just crazy, but I love it and I am super excited for December 1st!

While this was NOT one of my cheapest projects it will be well worth it. There are 3 rules: 1 mini bottle a day, drink straight from the bottle, and one picture per day.

For the record, neither of the guys will be drinking on days they are on duty or working. For those days that they can’t drink due to work they will have to drink those day’s bottles the next day that they can.