A Christmas Village Tree with Advent Gifts

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This Christmas village tree has hidden surprises! Each tiny house holds a little gift, and you can use it as an advent calendar. Check out our easy hack for making the houses into gift boxes!

Twelve Days of Christmas Advent Gift Tree
Twelve Days of Christmas Advent Gift Tree
Twelve Days of Christmas Advent Gift Tree
Twelve Days of Christmas Advent Gift Tree

Here’s a Christmas tree DIY that I think you’re gonna love. Like, deeply love. It’s a Christmas village tree with a hidden surprise!

Remember those cute little houses that we used a while back to create an advent calendar? Yep, this is where they were headed.

There are twelve houses on this 4-foot pink flocked tree, and each house has a little gift tucked inside, that you can open on days leading up to Christmas.

Psst — if you like this tree, you’re gonna love these:

And sign up for my VIP group below, where I’ll send more of my very best ideas right to ya!

How to Customize a Christmas Village Tree

I wanted to share the how-to here, in case you’d like to recreate our advent gift tree for yourself!

If you really wanted to go hog wild, you could get a larger tree and do 24 houses, for a full advent calendar. That could be SUPER awesome. But if you want to do a little guy like we did, a 4-foot tree works perfectly.

I call it an advent tree sometimes, and a 12 Days of Christmas tree sometimes, but obviously those things can’t be one and the same — the 12 days of Christmas are actually after Christmas, and advent leads up to it.

So you can decide what to call it, and how many houses you want to make. Now let’s do it!

Materials to make a CHRISTMAS VILLAGE Gift Tree

Materials

Make Time: 5 Hours Plus Drying Time

DIY Instructions for a Christmas Village Tree

  1. We shared the tutorial for creating the houses right here! You’ll saw off the back, add a hanger if needed, and paint them and decorate to your liking. Check out this post for the how-to there.
  2. Once all of the houses are completely dry, wrap your tiny advent gifts and add a gift to each house by slipping them into the back of the house where you cut the hole.
  3. After all of the houses have gifts inside, carefully hang them on your tree. Be sure that the larger houses are hung on sturdy branches that can support them.
  4. Finally, add more mini trees to your pink tree instead of ornaments! The mini trees really make the whole thing feel like a little Christmas village hanging on the tree. You could even add little electric candles inside of every house (or string extra Christmas lights inside) to make the houses glow.
  5. If you need tags, use our free printable Christmas tags to label the gifts.
Twelve Days of Christmas Advent Gift Tree
Twelve Days of Christmas Advent Gift Tree

It’s just so dang cute!!!

More Tree Ideas

This post is actually part of a week-long blog hop with dozens of other tree ideas! Check out the list below and click around – they’re all lovely.

Monday

Casa Watkins Living // Up To Date Interiors // Delineate Your Dwelling // Thou Swell // House Of Hipsters // French & French Interiors // Haneen’s Haven

Tuesday

Two Twenty One // Jeweled Interiors // Dimples and Tangles // PMQ For Two // Kaleidoscope Living // Reality Daydream // Heathered Nest

Wednesday

Setting For Four // Monica Want’s It // Domicile 37 // The Happy Housie // Lovely Indeed // Lemon Thistle // Amber Oliver

Thursday

Taryn Whiteaker Designs // Cherished Bliss // Lovely Etc. // The Honeycomb Home // My Sweet Savannah // Cuckoo For Design // Kate Decorates

Friday

Our Fifth House // Kelly Elko // Daly Digs // Tag & Tibby // House Homemade // Lolly Jane // The DIY Mommy

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience; that means that Lovely Indeed receives a small percentage if you purchase items via a link from this post.

Twelve Days of Christmas Advent Gift Tree
Twelve Days of Christmas Advent Gift Tree
Twelve Days of Christmas Advent Gift Tree
Twelve Days of Christmas Advent Gift Tree
Christmas Village Advent Tree

DIY Christmas Village Tree

Yield: Christmas Village Tree
Active Time: 5 hours
Total Time: 5 hours
Difficulty: Intermediate
Estimated Cost: $100

This Christmas village tree is so charming, and very fun to make!

Materials

  • 4 foot pink Christmas tree
  • assorted bottlebrush trees
  • unpainted birdhouses
  • craft paint
  • house decorations
  • ModPodge
  • fake snow

Tools

  • Dremel or saw
  • Scissors
  • Paintbrushes

Instructions

    1. We shared the tutorial for creating the houses right here! You'll saw off the back, add a hanger if needed, and paint them and decorate to your liking. Check out this post for the how-to there.
    2. Once all of the houses are completely dry, wrap your tiny advent gifts and add a gift to each house by slipping them into the back of the house where you cut the hole.
    3. After all of the houses have gifts inside, carefully hang them on your tree. Be sure that the larger houses are hung on sturdy branches that can support them.
    4. Finally, add more mini trees to your pink tree instead of ornaments! The mini trees really make the whole thing feel like a little Christmas village hanging on the tree. You could even add little electric candles inside of every house (or string extra Christmas lights inside) to make the houses glow.

Notes

I wanted to share the how-to here, in case you'd like to recreate our advent gift tree for yourself!

If you really wanted to go hog wild, you could get a larger tree and do 24 houses, for a full advent calendar. That could be SUPER awesome. But if you want to do a little guy like we did, a 4-foot tree works perfectly.

I call it an advent tree sometimes, and a 12 Days of Christmas tree sometimes, but obviously those things can't be one and the same -- the 12 days of Christmas are actually after Christmas, and advent leads up to it.

So you can decide what to call it, and how many houses you want to make.

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29 Comments

  1. Oh my goodness! This is the most adorable tree! I love that you went maxi and used large houses rather than small ones for a small tree. The bright and colorful houses just make this tree sooooo great!

  2. Very cute project, and it’s really creative to use those unfinished bird houses this way, but the title is confusing to me. Advent is the period leading up to Christmas, but the twelve days of Christmas are Dec. 25 through Jan. 6 (Three Kings’ Day). I would suggest choosing one or the other. It’s a cute idea to use it to anticipate Christmas, calling it an Advent Tree, or instead celebrating the twelve days of Christmas. I just don’t think it can be both.