Craft Night: Advent Calendar Paper Houses

Last Friday a friend and I decided to try and throw a last minute "Craft Night" and I do mean last minute. Like, I sent out invitations on Thursday.......last minute.

We wanted to make 12-day advent calendars so we just couldn't wait any longer for the proper length of time to plan a party. Despite the rush we managed to get a few friends together, including Beth from Home Stories A to Z and had a great time burning our fingers on hot glue, sipping wine and gushing over the adorable crafts!

Photo Home Stories A to Z

To make this craft. I pre-cut the houses with my Silhouette machine using these patterns:

3D tea light village school and cape house

3D tea light village town house and shops

3D tea light village cottage and barn

3D village church

I cut five sets of 12 houses plus the pine trees and bare trees and divided them by each person's preference. I made my houses with white cardstock. Ally made her houses with brown paper. The barn I made red with a brown roof.

The "craft" portion of the night was simply assembling and decorating the 12 houses which took surprisingly longer than expected. We arrived at 6pm and through the eating, talking, drinking and crafting we left at 10:15.

I'd love to do another "craft night" like this! Christmas is certainly a great excuse to do one but I wouldn't have minded doing one of these every month.

Check out the finished scene!

I was just floored by how easy and adorable these houses turned out for everyone! I highly recommend this idea as a craft night to anyone because it was easy enough for even an uncrafty person to do and still succeed.

With the lights turned off the look was ethereal.

I bought the tea lights at the dollar store. They were only 2 for $1. I already had the white and brown paper but it's only $6.50 at Michaels with a 50% off coupon. The patterns were $8 all together. Ally went out and bought glitter and glue. So each craft for 5 people was only about $10 per person with most of the expense spent on the tea lights.

Now that it's less than 12 days before Christmas I've been filling each with a small gift for the kids. Michaels and AC Moore have these neat little rubber figurines in a tube called "Toobs". They are $10 for 12 figurines but only $5 when you use their 50% off coupon! I bought these for Henri since he likes planes.

Ally bought these for her daughter since she likes animals.

I added numbers to the houses later.

And set them on our living room mantle.

Last night was the first night I let the kids lift the houses.

I bought flavored Chapsticks for Lily and Molly.

Eloise got a horse figurine.

They loved playing with their figurines together.

Pretty cute and inexpensive way to do a crafty little mini-advent this year.