Use these printable Advent Calendar Christmas Countdown Tags to create your own advent calendar or to label packages in your Christmas book countdown. There are so many uses for these little tags this holiday season.
Focus on Meaningful Traditions
I’ve found that focusing our energy on fewer but more meaningful traditions brings so much more joy than spreading ourselves thin trying to do it all.
Enjoying a simpler holiday season is a priority for me so I let some of the other traditions go, but this is one of those tradition that means so much to us: our Christmas book countdown! I got our Christmas books out of storage a few weeks ago and have ordered a few new books to add to our collection this year! It’s hard to believe December 1st is almost here!
We have many fond family memories of snuggling up on the couch and reading Christmas books by the light of the Christmas tree each year. I try my best to subscribe to a less-is-more mentality this time of year and I love that this simple tradition brings a bit of calm to the craziness of the holiday season. It gathers our family together at the end of each day, fosters connections and creates special memories.
About our Christmas Book Countdown
Through the years I’ve slowly added Christmas books to our collection. We borrow them from the library before we buy to make sure we’ll really love them first. Near the end of November I pull our Christmas books out of storage and wrap them up to be place under the Christmas tree in a special basket/container.
We start our countdown on December first and the youngest child gets to open the first book. Each night before bed –pajamas must be on and teeth brushed first – we take turns opening that days book and then read it together as a family
Packaging our Books
Wrapping 25 books is no small task so I like to keep the wrapping very basic, but still pretty, since these packages will be on display in our home throughout the month of Decemeber. I use white or brown wrapping paper – I love the look.
In an effort to keep things simple when it came to labeling all 25 of our wrapped books I created a a numbered set of advent calendar or Christmas countdown tags that I could easily attach to each package and reuse again each year.
I created two sets of tags, one in black and white that can be printed on any colour paper – I really like how they look printed on Kraft cardstock! I also created a pretty set of gold foil tags that add just the right touch of glitz and glimmer.
How to use these tags
You can use these tags to put together a simple advent calendar. Attach them to paper bags, a series of envelopes or small gift boxes to create your own countdown to Christmas OR you can use them like I did for our Christmas Book Countdown. Attach one to each wrapped book to be opened as you countdown to Christmas!
First you need to download the printable tags. They’re available in PDF format. Next print the tags out. Print the gold foil tags on white cardstock and the black and white ones on kraft cardstock or another color of your choice.
Next cut the tags out, my current go-to scissors for craft and paper projects are these stainless steel softgrip scissors by Fiskars. After you’ve cut out your tags you can get as creative as you’d like with attaching them. You could use washi tape, twine, ribbon or simply tape the tags directly to your package and call it good.
I hope you enjoy these simple little tags, however you choose to use them this holiday season! I’m really excited to be using them to help wrap our books this year. You can find out more about our Christmas book Countdown in this post. I’ve collected some well-loved Christmas classics that we enjoy reading together as a family year after year.
Our top 12 Christmas Books
These are the books my kids look forward to reading the most and that I love reading with them! These books are sentimental and carry with them many special Christmas memories. You can find a list of 50 of our favorite Christmas books in this post.
- Stickman
- Santa mouse
- The Spirit of Christmas
- A Very Merry Christmas Prayer
- The Sweet Smell of Christmas
- Lift-the-Flap Nativity
- The Animals’ Christmas Eve
- The Jolly Christmas Postman
- The Crippled Lamb
- Snowmen at Christmas
- Dream Snow
- The Night Before Christmas
If you liked this post you might also enjoy…
- A Less-is-More Christmas Season
- 50 Photos to Take This Christmas
- 12 Quick Tips for taking Memorable Holiday Photos
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Hi! I’ve tried downloading the PDFs but both links are coming up as an error.
These are fabulous! Definitely going to print these out! Thanks so much!
I am so happy that I saw these wonderful tags! Printing as we speak! Thanks for sharing something so fantastic.
Love your tags but like one of your other readers I could not get these to download. I’m not a real techie so I don’t know what I am doing wrong. I was hoping to just hit your link and the tags appear. Perhaps you could enlighten me. I’m running windows 07 so I think my computer program is up to date. Many thanks
So pretty. Thank you! Thanks also for clarifying that you reuse the books from year to year…I couldn’t figure out how people managed this tradition!
Thank you so much, Rebecca! Those are adorable. Will definitely use them in my December daily project.
Love this! So glad I came across your blog 😉
Hugs, Jamie
We have a little wooden Christmas Tree Advent Calendar. The 1st year I put money and lots of little items inside it (mostly candy). Last year (the 2nd year) I only had some small items, and others much too big, so I made “tickets” for a certain item (that I’d then have to get from my hiding place). This year I wanted to do something different, and the idea came to me when we got our Christmas Tree and then a small table top one for my daughter’s room. I’m going to use brown paper bags. So I went searching for tags and found these. I printed the Gold Foil one’s out on plain white card stock then put them on paint chips (my daughter loves getting them every time we go to Home Depot so score!). They are just adorable, and very sturdy. I got the first bag set up tonight and will do the rest tomorrow when I can get to the Dollar Tree to get a few more items and some paper bags. Hubby saw the first bag and liked it. Thank you for sharing. I hope to reuse these again and again (if not the paper bags too).
Thanks for those gogeous printables. I think, I´ll put them in my december daily. 😉
OMG I love this idea! Such a smart idea! And your wrapping and tags are so pretty! You’ve given me some awesome inspiration! 🙂 You should join me on Tuesdays for the Celebrate Southern link up I host over at http://www.2catsandchloe.com for some southern-inspired posts. You don’t have to be a southern blogger to join, this post would be a perfect fit! 🙂
Thanks so very much !! I love the beautiful numbers!
Hi Rebecca,
I love these, thank you so much!! I shared your picture on Instagram also: http://instagram.com/hannekedewit
Love,
Hanneke
you made my day ore month….
thank you so much.
love
brigitte
Thank you for the beautiful tags! I look forward to adding them to my December daily album.
Hello! I love these tags. In fact, I’m hoping you might be able to share which font you used to create the #1 and #sixteen tags. I would love to use this design for my wedding table numbers, but I can’t seem to figure out which font you used.
Many thanks in advance!
Kelly
Merci beaucoup.
They look absolutely gorgeous! I will use them this year 🙂
Hi – what kind of white wrapping paper do you use? I want to do this with books for the kids but am afraid that it will show through the paper. any recommendations? thanks!
I found some thicker white paper at the dollar store Gina.
thanks for sharing
I put your link on my blog
We have done a Christmas book countdown every year since my daughters were little…but they never looked this good. I am so excited to use these tags! THANK YOU!
Hello Rebecca, today I posted my DIY Advent Calendar , and I recomended your tags because are beutiful!!!
thank you for sharing , I love following your blog!
Thank you so much for these beautiful printable! I just used them for my advent calendar and just posted some photos on my blog if you would like to check it out! http://www.lebebecollective.com
Thanks so much for the printables! They worked perfectly for my kids’ advent calendar that I made this year! I’m actually sad to see them open each day, because I love the graphic look of the numbers! Here’s the post: http://www.aturtleslifeforme.com/2015/12/advent-calendar.html
Thank you so much for sharing these cute printables – I used them for friends presents and they were thrilled!
The idea of wraping the 24 books for a countdown is lovely! Have a wonderful Christmas Time!
how do you print the advent calender
Thank you for creating and sharing these tags! Merry Christmas!
Are these tags still available? I can’t find a download link.
Yes they are Karen. You need to subscribe to the SAT newsletter here and you’ll receive a link to the download: https://simpleasthatblog.com/newsletter
What gift wrap do you use? Also do you have instructions on how to create gold foil?