Our homemade wooden sleigh {Book Advent planning}

Last year I really wanted a way to display our Book Advent. A pile of 24 books takes up quite a lot of room but I wanted them to be accessible and not look out of place amongst the Christmas decorations.

In previous years I’ve experimented with wrapping them up. One year they were covered in simple brown paper and string, this year they are wrapped in festive red and white paper. You can add numbers to each packet or let your children have a lucky dip every day.

Anyway, we had a wooden crate made with plywood which I thought it would be fun to upcycle, so we did. It seemed a little crazy at the time as we were busy with my daughter’s birthday and Christmas preparations, which is why I’m only getting round to telling you about it now.

I removed the lid and turned the crate on its side, roughly drawing a line where I wanted to cut to make it into a sleigh shape.

My husband cut away the top part using a jigsaw.

Then I sanded it to make sure it was smooth.

That was the simple part but I think you can see it looked more sleigh-like at this stage than before. We added two wooden runners from off cuts and used wood glue to attach these to the bottom. Then I painted the whole thing with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Emperor’s Silk.

This is one of my favourite colours and I’m still eeking out the little pot I have, it lasts for ever. The best thing is that you don’t need to prep the wood or do anything, just paint.

This is one of my favourite makes and is perfect for storing our Book Advent books. I have dusted it off again for this year and can’t wait to see the children’s faces when they see it full of books to share during December.