Holiday To Do List: Advent Calendar

So, I mentioned yesterday that I love me some Holiday Traditions...today I wanted to share another tradition we have started for Connor - our Advent Calendar.  When we were kids, Brian and I had the chocolate Advent Calendars - the kind where you open up a little cardboard door and pop out the cheapy chocolate?!  Well, we've upped the ante with our version.

We started our Advent Calendar three years ago, when Connor was old enough to start counting down to Christmas. Our calendar is a a simple Primitive style fabric tree, that hangs on our kitchen pantry door. It has 25 small pockets. The first year, we used simple things to fill the pocket each day -  a small piece of chocolate, some stickers, a matchbox car...then last year, we found the Lego Advent Calendar and we used that....attaching the day's Lego Toy to the pocket with a clip each day. Connor LOVED it!

Lego City 2009 Advent Calendar Photo via Amazon.com

This year we are doing the Playmobile Advent Calendar:

Playmobile Advent Calendar Image via Amazon.com

We chose this one because while Connor (and us!) LOVES Legos, he also has started a collection of Playmobile sets, and we wanted to add to that collection. This Advent Calendar is a nice collection of Woodland Creatures, which will be right up his alley! We purchased it at our local Wegman's, but it is available online at retailers like Amazon.com for right around $20.00. We plan on clipping each day's piece to its pocket like we did last year, and setting up the backdrop on Connor's dresser in his room.  I know he is really looking forward to it!

I've seen lots of cute tutorials on the blogs I read lately for making new Advent Calendars. I think I am going to look into this, since our pockets are a little too small. So, is there an Advent Calendar in your house? What do you put in it?