Fancy-Pants Advent Calendar

Merry (almost) Christmas!  Since almost all my craftiness has given way to knitting, I thought I'd take this chance to post something non-knitting related (well, mostly anyway) since it doesn't happen to often that I make something that doesn't involve yarn and needles.  This year, instead of the open-up-the-doors-to-reveal-a-small-piece-of-waxy-chocolate-like-substance advent calendars, I thought we'd try something new.  A homemade, and much more exciting version!

Bought small treats of all sorts, put them in little Christmas-themed bags and strung them on a red ribbon in our hallway.  I thought I was going to put them across the fireplace mantel until I attempted it and the weight of some of the bags made it too heavy to get it to stay attached.  I thought I was being very fancy until I looked on Facebook an hour later and saw that my cousin (who moved away when she was 12 and I was 9, but somehow we grew up still able to send each other psychic-craft vibes) in Florida had the exact same idea this year.  Only difference was that hers is way cuter, and I may have to steal this idea if we do it again next year (which at this point seems pretty definite.) She said she bought her little Christmas-y socks out of the dollar bin, but her friend had put one up using a boat load of socks crocheted by her grandma.  I could knit 24 socks for an advent calendar, but that would probably take me an entire year if I got started right this minute. 

My cousin's advent calendar has little number tags so the kids know exactly which sock to get into each day, while I let mine be a random string of bags and we let the kids fight over figure out together which one they want to open each day. 

Anyway, inside the bags/socks there have to be treats!  I went with both edible and non-edible things.  Anything from a couple pieces of candy to granola bars and dried fruit (I know this seems overly health-foodie of me, but my kids actually go crazy when I buy dried fruit).  I have a few non-edible things like some mini invisible-ink books and little cards that give them extra computer time that day.  I still have about 10 bags I need to fill before the middle of the month, so I'm going to hit the dollar bins and look for some small things while I'm out shopping.  They both love Legos, so I'm going to put a couple mini figures in there, maybe have a bag with a card for each of them to pick out a couple new songs for their mp3 players from Amazon.com, and maybe a bag with a card saying that tonight will be pizza & board game night with the whole family.  I still need to think of a few ideas, so if you've got one, leave it in the comments section!