Gifting a Book Countdown!

Advent calendars and countdowns to Christmas are one of my favorite parts of the holiday. I love the anticipation of Christmas and we always do at least two different countdowns each year.

This year, I have a friend who has been going through a hard time and is facing a more difficult Christmas, so I wanted to do something special for her. We both are big book nerds and had an idea of a gift--a book countdown to Christmas! I am going to gift her 24 individually wrapped books and a treat attached, to unwrap one each day leading up to Christmas.

To start, I got on Thriftbooks to help keep the cost of this more manageable. I went through my Goodreads list to find books I have read over the last few years that I think she'd really like and found some on Thriftbooks. Many weren't available, weren't in good enough condition, or were too expensive. I tried to keep the price to about $5 per book and I didn't go with anything under "very good" condition as I'm gifting the books. This friend loves Thriftbooks and finding books at thrift stores (we often go shopping there together!), so I knew she would be fine with receiving used books.

I also know her favorite treat, so I got on Vitacost and bought the treats in bulk.

I made some tags to go in with the books. On the tags, I wrote down (in red and green, of course) the book title and then a little explanation of what the book was about along with why I personally liked the book so much.

Book Tags.pdf

Download PDF • 5KB

Once all the books arrived, I decided what order I wanted to her to receive them in (the middle ones weren't as important, but the first and last were more important, and some books were part of a series that I wanted her to unwrap in sequence). I wrapped them each in brown paper and twine, putting the countdown number on the top (24 down to 1). I used these free printable gift tags from Lovely Planner. With the twine, I attached the treat.

Then it was ready to deliver and let her countdown start!

This was honestly one of the most fun things I've done for Christmas in quite awhile (and that's saying something, because we do a lot of fun things for Christmas!).

Do you do any fun countdowns for Christmas? What is a fun, service-oriented tradition you have? I would love to hear from you in the comments below!