Celebrate the holiday season with this 12 Days of Christmas Countdown! Easily craft your countdown toward Christmas Family Activities or celebrate the season as a couple with 12 easy date night ideas. Or go crazy and do both! It’s the perfect way to focus on time with family during this crazy holiday season!
CELEBRATE THE SEASON WITH A CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN ADVENT GARLAND FULL OF HOLIDAY ACTIVITIES!
It’s easy for the holiday season to be focused on shopping, wrapping, and schedules crammed full of required parties. Not that those things can’t be fun or joyful, but it’s easy to be so focused on our holiday to-do lists that we don’t really take the time to enjoy the season. This Christmas Countdown Garland is meant to change all that!
This Christmas Countdown Garland is meant to be filled with easy holiday activities and special Christmas excursions that allow for you to spend quality time with your family, your partner or even both! Many of these countdown advent calendars that I’ve seen in the past have assigned activities to certain days already, but that doesn’t work for my family lifestyle.
Instead, I’m giving you a TON of ideas that you will be able to write in on whatever day works best for you. So if Fridays work best for Christmas movie nights, done! Or if you already have a special Christmas date planned, you can simply add it to the right day. This is meant to work with your schedule – NOT make anything harder!
Of course, if this doesn’t work for your schedule right now, use it after Christmas for a winter countdown! OR even shorten it to 6 days to fit with your kids break. Make this advent garland work for you!
WHY DO A HOLIDAY ACTIVITIES COUNTDOWN GARLAND?
Bryan and I often find ourselves being swept along with time, if that makes sense. We suddenly realize it’s mid-December and we’ve barely done anything fun or special to celebrate the season. Things have just been so busy with Thanksgiving travel, my sister trip, work, and other engagements.
It’s not just at Christmas time either. The first time we made one of these countdown garlands was a few years ago for Valentine’s Day called 14 Days of Love. It has consistently been one of my most popular posts here at The Love Nerds.
Instead of celebrating one day of Valentine’s Day, we decided to reconnect with 14 date nights at home, and we’ve done it a few times since, too. Taking that concentrated time to spend together really helps us focus back on what’s most important. We’ve also done a 14 notes of love one year as well which is especially nice when you need a little pick me up!
I especially love the idea of doing it now for the holiday season because I think we’ll be in a much better, stronger place before we enter family-palooza and don’t have a ton of time just the two or three of us.
HOW TO DISPLAY YOUR CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN GARLAND?
I am giving you a few different options for this Christmas countdown garland with the hope of it being super simple for you!
Your first decision will, of course, be if you want to display it as a garland like we do or if you want to display it with magnets on your fridge, in a frame like my Valentine’s Day advent calendar, or something else. It could be really cute cut smaller and placed hanging inside a Christmas wreath, too! So many options.
Then, included with your free download:
PRINTED COUNTDOWN TREES IN GREEN: You can print the trees out in green with white numbers for the countdown.
PRINTED COUNTDOWN TREES OUTLINED FOR CUTTING: I am providing this option in case you want to print on green paper or Christmas paper and then cut them out. It’s a great option if you have a huge stack of scrapbook paper like I do or want to go with a special color or theme to match your other Christmas decorations.
SVG TREE GARLAND FILES: I am also providing the SVG files of these trees in case you want to cut them out using your Silhouette or Cricut, which is what I did to make my Christmas Advent Garland. Then, I chose to write in the numbers and activities by hand
FAMILY CHRISTMAS ACTIVITIES FOR YOUR COUNTDOWN ADVENT GARLAND:
Many people have special family traditions already in place, so you should definitely start with those when scheduling our your activities for the advent calendar. I am also providing you with a starting list of ideas to help!
- Holiday Lights Tour
- Holiday Movies with Popcorn Garland
- Bake Christmas Cookies or Treats —> Classic Sugar Cookies are great for this as is Peppermint Puppy Chow!
- Decorate a Gingerbread House
- Host a Cookie Exchange Party
- Make Homemade Christmas Ornaments
- Make Your Own Christmas Wreath
- Make Christmas Shirts for the Whole Family or Friends!
- Attend a Christmas Festival
- Donate to Charity —> It’s a great time to purge old toys!
- Volunteer
- Read Favorite Christmas Books —> Consider a special edition of Twas the Night Before Christmas
- Family Game Night
- Holiday Crafts
- Enjoy a Christmas Tree Picnic —> Could be dinner, brunch or even just dessert with hot cocoa!
- Play Outside in the Snow
- Go Ice Skating
- Head to a Big Sledding Hill
- Attend a Special Christmas Show or Event
- Visit Santa
CHRISTMAS DATE NIGHT ACTIVITIES FOR YOUR COUNTDOWN ADVENT GARLAND:
If you want to use this Christmas Advent Garland for a 12 Date Nights of Christmas instead, here are some ideas to get your started! If you look at the family list of ideas above, you’ll notice some of these are repeated and some are tweaked a little bit for date night!
- Write each other Love Letters (or short love notes) every day!
- Holiday Lights Tour
- Holiday Movie Night —> Consider enjoying a fun Holiday Cocktail with your movie or even make a drinking game out of classic Christmas words!
- Bake Christmas Cookies or Treats
- Decorate a Gingerbread House
- Gift Wrapping Party to Christmas Music!
- Make Homemade Christmas Gifts for Family or Each Other
- Attend a Christmas Festival
- Donate to Charity
- Volunteer Together
- Snuggle Up Together on the Couch with Books and Hot Cocoa
- Game Night —> I have a list of great 2 player games for inspiration, and also provide two free games on the site that are always really popular with you all – Couples Scattergories and The Not So Newlywed Game!
- Order Dinner in and Enjoy a Christmas Tree Picnic
- Snow Day! Plan a mutual day off if possible and be childlike and play outside in the snow. Or use the day to go Christmas shopping together and out to lunch!
- Go Ice Skating
- Attend a Special Christmas Show or Event —> Think symphony or ballet
- Relive Childhood Traditions —> This could be made into two nights, celebrating each of your childhood traditions on individual nights.
- Complete Your Couple’s Year in Review —> A fun way to reminisce about the past year!
GET YOUR CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN GARLAND NOW!!!
In order to get this FREE Christmas Countdown Garland, all you need to do is sign up to be a part of our Love Nerd Email Community. If you are already signed up, make sure to check your email inbox for an email from me with the link to download. (don’t see an email and not in spam? Feel free to sign up again. You don’t receive double emails!)
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