Jo and I love Advent calendars, and usually try to come up with something new each year. This year we designed a fun lottery ticket advent calendar. I just love this idea, and it came out so cute!

To make this calendar, I started with 24 Christmas-themed lottery tickets (one for each day of December until Christmas). We found some with really cute characters on them, and chose the rest of the supplies to coordinate with the ticket colors. For the backdrop of the calendar, I got a big piece of light blue felt off the bolt at the fabric store. I got 2/3 of a yard, but you may need more or less, depending on the size of your tickets. I also grabbed some white felt, some red satin ribbon, and some white felt snowflakes.

The first step was to determine how wide my felt needed to be in order to fit two tickets side by side, with a snowflake next to each one. I laid them out on the felt with a yardstick and decided that 17" would work great. I cut the felt into a long piece that was 17" wide.

I decided to hang the calendar by a wooden dowel across the top, so I first needed to make a pocket for it. I folded over the top edge about 2 inches and then sewed it down with a row of zigzag stitches. Jo insisted I use red thread, which looked really cute and matched the ribbon I was going to add later.

Then I used some self-adhesive felt letters to add a title to the top of the felt. The famous "Ho Ho Ho" combined with the possibility of a cash windfall equals "Ho Ho Dough"!

I put my two sample tickets and snowflakes back on the blue felt, and lined them up next to the letters so they were just how I wanted. Then I took two long pieces of red ribbon and laid them on top, centering them over the tickets.

I pinned each ribbon in place to hold it for now.

With the ribbon secure, I removed the tickets and snowflakes and folded the top edge of each ribbon under, to hide the rough edge. I used a little hot glue to secure the ribbon to itself and then to the felt.

Then I slid two lottery tickets back up under the ribbon, scooting them up as far as they would go.

I put another dab of hot glue under the first ribbon on the left as far up as I could without getting it on the ticket, creating a nice tight pocket to hold the ticket. I did the same thing for the other ribbon on the right.

Then I added two more tickets and glued the ribbon down after them again. Isn't this a clever way to make sure the pockets are perfectly fitted without having to measure?

I continued down the ribbon, adding tickets in pairs, until all 24 of them were affixed.

When I got to the bottom, I left a few inches of the ribbon hanging down, and then covered the ends and the bottom of the blue felt with some white felt that I cut to look like a snow drift.

A quick run of the scissors across the bottom and the extra blue felt was trimmed off perfectly.

With the tickets all attached, I just needed to number them, in order to make it a true countdown calendar. I grabbed my self-adhesive snowflakes and put one next to each ticket, alternating between the two snowflake sizes that came in the pack. Oh my goodness, this thing was getting so cute!

I used some tiny red glitter stickers to add a number to each snowflake.

To hang the calendar, I cut a wooden dowel rod a couple inches longer than the blue felt is wide, then put a tiny eye screw in each end.

I fed the dowel through the pocket at the top of the felt. Then I attached some of the red ribbon to each end, leaving enough slack to make a nice-looking hanger.

The finished calendar looks so amazing hanging on the door. I can't wait until December 1st so I can start scratching one ticket each day. I've already promised both my niece and Little Jo that they can scratch the ticket whenever they come over. I don't normally buy lottery tickets, but this sure seems like a fun way to count down to Christmas this year!