Christmas Countdown Chain

I am so excited today because guess what?  I FINALLY talked my amazingly creative sister-in-law (and Etsy business partner) Shelly into sharing one of her awesome ideas with us today!  She is always doing such fun things (with her kids, home, neighborhood, family) but has no blog to share her genius with the world!  I’m so glad she took the time to take some pictures and do a little write up today.  I love this idea to use up all of that extra Halloween candy to make a Christmas Countdown Chain… and perfect timing here right before December 1st!  My son got 23lbs of Halloween candy this year. {gasp!} I know. Crazy! I didn’t want that much candy around the house and he didn’t care to keep all of it. It was just the thrill to see how much he and his friends could get. I had him fill a gallon size bag with candy he wanted to keep and then we started thinking of what he could do with the rest. He said “let’s donate it to charity”. I figured we could probably take it to the food bank, but I wanted to think of something a little more. I remember seeing countdown to Christmas chains with candy and thought that could be fun for us to make together.

After they’re all made he is going to sell them for $3 and use that money for our Sub-4-Santa family. I guess it’s a lot more work than just giving it to the food bank. But it’s also a lot more fun! 😉

If you’d like to make one (or some), here’s what you’ll need:

• Leftover Halloween candy or a variety of store bought candy
• Cellophane or plastic wrap
• Ribbon or washi tape
• Christmas Countdown poem tag (free printable below)

  We started by putting all of his candy in baggies of 25 (starting the countdown Dec 1st). When we were ready to assembly we laid out the cellophane in a long strip (getting 3 width wise out of each strip).

We put the candy in a long row and then tied ribbon or wrapped washi tape in between each piece.

At the top we attached our Christmas Countdown poem and a loop of ribbon to hang it from. Now they’re ready to start the countdown!

You can download the tags by clicking the links below:

Christmas Countdown Tags

Christmas Countdown Tags (Christ-centered)

Isn’t that a great idea?  And who doesn’t love counting down to Christmas let alone with a piece of candy each day?  Thanks to Shelly for sharing!  I really hope she does more posts here in the future… love this!