If you look around at all of the Advent calendars out there, there are just as many designed for adults as there are for kids. But, in the land of Hanukkah decor, it seems that most of the designers seem to think only little kids celebrate Hanukkah. So last year I decided to make my husband his very own Hanukkah Countdown for each night of Hanukkah.

I started with some sweet gold striped mini bags and my trusty number stamp set from Impress.  I don’t see the exact bags I bought last year but either this striped combo set or these gold foil dot ones would be super cute but the possibilities are endless.  As a side note, these number stamps are so versatile for birthdays and all kinds of crafting.  But they are particularly awesome for Hanukkah – remember the Hanukkah tags I made several years ago?  I keep reusing them each year for my son! Anyway, stamp the bags 1 through 8.  Your choice of ink will depend largely on your bag and any ink it has to compete with, etc.  I think I used Majestic Blue Versafine.

Okay so bags prepped, now for the fun part, what to fill them with?!?  If the title of this post didn’t give it away, I decided to go the alcohol route and had fun with the selection of single-serving airplane bottles (and a pouch) at the liquor store in order to give my husband an array of whiskey. You could easily pick a variety of spirits or stick to a singular type like I did. If you have a big wine store you could even do fun mini bottles of bubbles every day (dear husband, you should take note of this!)

Then you put the booze in the bags and use some cute washi tape (or ribbon or whatever you have around) to seal them up since part of the fun of the countdown is the sheer surprise. I mean we may not have stockings on Christmas morning but we can have bags of booze on Hanukkah!

Okay so the final step is to display your handiwork. Since I already had my holiday card display hung (and it wasn’t yet full), I decided to just use that.  I can’t remember if I have mentioned it before but my card display consists of two wall-length pieces of navy blue satin ribbon and mini clothespins that I spray-painted silver. The ribbon is attached to the wall using my favorite 3M picture hanging strips that leave no trace when the holidays are over.  Ta da!

Although the largest glass bottle was really cute, it was also really heavy and so this was probably not the best way to display it (especially since I think I made it #8 – note the three clothespins on that bag!).  So you may want to keep this in mind if you are choosing heavier bottles and decide to go with boxes or set your bags on the mantle instead.  Really there are so many possibilities for putting together your own adult Hanukkah countdown that also adds a little holiday whimsy.

L’Chaim!