The 12 Days of Halloween

I said in a previous post. that the thing I'm most looking forward to about being a parent is family traditions. Continuing the ones that our family's have passed on to us and creating our own family traditions. I was looking around on Pinterest for an advent calendar. I didn't want to use the store bought punch out candy kind. I wanted one that focused on things that we can do together as a family. I also wanted one that was easy to store throughout the year so that I don't have to remake it each year. I found this idea that used a fabric paper chain.




Then I decided that I didn't want to wait until Christmas. So I decided to create one for each of the different holidays. While I didn't want to do the entire month leading up to Halloween, Thanksgiving etc. I still wanted to do something to celebrate each holiday and so the 12 days of Halloween was born.

Layer fabric, heat bond, & felt.

Cut into strips. The tutorial called for 7x1 inch strips but I'd say 9x1 inch would look better.

Attach velcro to each end and form a ring.


Our first activity was footprint art so I thought it'd be really cute to use it to "hold" our chain.

Inside each ring there's a strip of paper with a family activity. Here's the list of things that we'll be doing starting today with footprint art.


12. Visit the Pumpkin Patch
11. eat Halloween Pizza
10. Mail Halloween Cards to friends and family
9. make halloween hand/foot print art
8. Make Halloween Rice Krispy treats
7. wear halloween PJs
6. "BOO" the neighbors
5. carve pumpkins
4. ghost pancakes for breakfast
3. Eat pumpkin icecream sandwiches
2. Photo shoot in costume
1. wear orange

This is the list for this year. In the future we'll add things like choose your costume (from McCalls/Simplicity pattern book), bob for apples, watch a scary movie, read ghost stories by flashlight. I like that some will be classics that'll never change and some will need to change as she grows. I'm workin' on the list for Thanksgiving if you have any great ideas.

Here's the finished Thanksgiving and Christmas chains too!