Advent calendars were lots of fun when I was a kid, generally it meant a wee piece of chocolate before school, but the fun was really the excitement of getting to open that door. Just one, every day in the count down to christmas.

As adults we lose some of that christmas fun and start to become grouchy about christmas and the chores and responsibility it brings. Well you know what? I’m not having it anymore!

When Kate and I met, this was one of the things about us which were polar opposites. She calls me the christmas elf, ever since I christmas bombed her flat (oh it was glorious) with a friend. She came home from work to find the most hideous, tacky and over the top christmas decorations EVERYWHERE… even in the fridge. See the thing was, I love christmas, well the holidays to be precise, but Kate was a complete grinch when we met, she didn’t even put up a single decoration or send a christmas card.

Sorry I am still laughing at the memory of the fridge! We put this little snowman in there that was motion activated, so everytime she opened the fridge door, the snowman played christmas tunes. There was no way to shut him off, you had to leave him running. Ha ha ha ha it drove her nuts.

So, as a special thank you treat for letting her christmas elf out ( a tiny bit), I am going to make her a special advent calendar to give her a christmas bomb of fun every day as she counts down to Eli the christmas elf getting over excited!

Grown up advent calendars

Let’s be honest, a wee bit of chocolate everyday isnt really going to set the world on fire is it, so let’s make this something that Kate will love.

As with all good craft project, it starts with a wee treat for you, to keep you going you understand. It could be a nice coffee, a pot of tea… but it’s Friday night so a wee espresso martini for me I think. You know just to keep me going 🙂

So, Kate… to give her the equivalent of the little door to open, I’m going with little gift bags, all labeled up so she knows which to open every day. I’ll display them just like an advent calendar with the numbers 1 – 24 on them.

And a craft snowflake stamp works wonders to turn a boring, brown, paper bag into a treat, and they will go in the craft box as something reusable for other years once this year is done. 

Now the trick, where to create this, as obviously 24 gift bags are going to take a bit of thought. So how on earth am I going to display these so you can see the bags and numbers and easily get to them each day, but still make it feel like an advent calendar, not just a bunch of bags to sort through?

Tiny little clothes pegs on a string! We already do this for Christmas cards so it will work alongside the decks when they finally go up. Sorted. Eek! It’s going to be huge though, maybe I didn’t think this through enough. Oops!

Now the last thing, how do I make it more Kate?! Mah ha ha ha coffee of course. Each bag has one coffee’s worth of fresh artisan coffee, to give her a different one to try out every day but still get her fresh, good coffee.

So the bags are filled, decorated and numbers are written on them, time to get them out on display.

It’s not elegant, but it’s quite big, bigger than I had planned to be honest, oh well at least she won’t miss it in the morning. It’s very noticeable (remember to mix up the dates to give it that authentic, try to find the door, advent feel).

Em update….. she didn’t notice! Really, she walked past it three or four times before I had to point it out!