Fill your own advent calendars

[ILOVEALLCAKES]

I have bought two lovely advent calendars from Hobbycraft for DD’s, ages 9 & 10yrs. I’d love you to share you ideas of things to fill them with. The sections are quite small, enough to accommodate 3-4 celebrations sweets.

Hair clips and hair bobbles
Lipsmacker stick
Temporary tattoos
Novelty rubbers
Expanding face flannel
Body shop bath bubble www.thebodyshop.com/en-gb/body/bath-bombs-bubbles/pink-grapefruit-fragranced-bath-bubble/p/p002649
Nail varnish
Bracelet
Cinema ticket

My Mum made a beautiful refillable calendar for our DC.... then left it to me to fill, which became harder each year, but I felt emotionally blackmailed by DM and DC to continue!

If you are planning some activities in December eg cinema or a walk to see Christmas lights, you can write that on a slip of paper and pop It in the pocket.
I also sometimes wrapped up bigger items and put them in a gift bag, and wrote 'lucky dip' on paper.

I end up collecting stuff all year for ours! Hair bands and clips, a badge, stickers, satchel of fake snow, rubbers in different shapes, tiny wind up toy, bouncy ball, little bag of loom bands, christmassy cheap necklace, keyring, few plastic beads and elastic to make a bracelet.

I often look for "party bag fillers" and if I have to buy something in a set of 4 or 6 I keep them for the next year.

I do somethings put the location in the calender of a larger gift that wouldn't fit - usually this is because it is something I want them to have the use of over advent e.g. a new christmas jumper or a christmassy book.

Last thing - places like Aliexpress are good for finding small things cheaply. I normally look up words like "christmas" or "kawaii" and see what comes up. You need to order early though (I've recently put an order in for my calender).

Do not start....

Ours we took a great deal of thought about when my mum gave us one. We did not want to add to tat, we did not want to have stuff in that we'd put in their stocking... so first my mum (and now me) put a couple of chocolate coins or Cadbury heros in each pocket ... they are 19 and 21 this year and it is still our tradition... so be prepared for the long game

We do a song advent for our fill your own as we have a shared one - kids each choose 12 songs, write them down and then I distribute through the days. We play that song when having breakfast each day. This is honestly the bit they are most excited!

In addition i then add a sweet and then for about 6 of the windows I also add a small toy - blind bag, little Lego figure, polished gemstone. But only on a few so not too difficult!

I do one for my dc, some days it’s a chocolate some days it’s a Christmas badge, 1st of December is a Christmas pen or pencil with paper, envelope & stamp to write to Santa. I put panto tickets in for one day, small decoration for decorating the tree on a particular day, a Christmas baking session written on paper with a chocolate, craft activity etc. I try not to go over board and also not fill with too much plastic tat.

One year I got a bracelet and then every day was a charm to put on it (not too expensive from eBay I think ) that way didn’t end up with too much stuff that would be thrown away.

Love the idea of a stamp to send a letter to Santa.

I would go for activities and things you think they can actually use (hair bobbles/stationery etc.) and avoid needless plastic tat as much as possible

Don't get in to putting tat in, seriously. In five years time the advent calendars will become a tradition, cheap tat that little kids love will no longer be an option, you'll put pressure on yourself to outdo yourself all the time and you will come to utterly despise this extra Christmas chore you've created.

Stick to a chocolate. A Ferrero Rocher fits nicely in DS's, a mini packet of swizzlers, £1 if I forgot... he's 17 and still has the bloody thing.

We only do chocolate in ours. Each Advent Sunday DD would also get a tiny gift (hair stuff, Lego blind bag, Playmobil single figure pens or similar). I wanted to avoid spending a fortune and most items are like party bag stuff, immediately forgotten and lying around.

Thank you all so much for so many brilliant ideas. Was planning on avoiding plastic tat, cannot stand the waste.
Love the stamp, letter to Santa idea as well as activities such as a baking day, trip to see the lights and cinema. I’m definitely pinching those tips.
I think I’ll stick with mostly chocolate, intertwining with the above.
Thanks again.

This has given me the boot up the bum I needed to start thinking about this early for once! Lots of great ideas.

Temporary tattoos.
Sweets/choc (they eat them after school, not before breakfast!).
Lego blind bag on the last day of school.
Cute keyring.

I also add in little notes about how lovely they are, how they did well at X sport or behaved beautifully at Y event, how proud of them I am, something personal to boost confidence. We roll the notes up and keep them in a jar that can be re-read throughout the year.

I also totally plagiarize Thoughts of Dog on Twitter and pass them off as our dog

I don't put in different activities (biscuits, gingerbread house, decorate the tree...) Because we're never sure what day we'll do them and often kids are tired from school and don't fancy doing xyz activity.

Print out some Christmas jokes.
"Baking day today" - gingerbread is nice and can hang on the tree.
"Meet on the sofa at 7.30 to watch Elf"
"Invitation to Christmas Lights Spectacular" - walk round the neighbourhood voting for best lights
"Gift Wrapping workshop" - stamp some brown paper with potato print stars or whatever and teach them how to wrap a parcel
"Charity donation day" - declutter old toys
Shoebox appeal shopping trip (not sure how early that needs to be done)
Voucher for a day off chores - valid from January

We do a joint one for the children, with the same contents each year, plus a few sweets/ larger chocolate figures.

The repeats are: various figures for the nativity scene which appear throughout December - with baby Jesus on Christmas Eve, an angel figure, a couple of other decorative items that are special for my children, angel chimes, tickets to see Santa/ winter fair etc.

The best one my mum did for me was buying a £15ish lego set and splitting it up into 24 little packages. I got to assemble a bit each day and had a decent lego set at the end. - it was a lego friends hot chocolate van.

I just do chocolates. So I mix up some posh days with Lindor balls and then do celebrations or wrapped choc orange segsations. I always do some of the choc coins and cheaper foil wrapped choc.
Scatter a few of the mini Lindt animal ones and do few days with the bigger choc penguins and stuff.
Last one is always the choc Santa’s.

@Twillow

Print out some Christmas jokes. "Baking day today" - gingerbread is nice and can hang on the tree. "Meet on the sofa at 7.30 to watch Elf" "Invitation to Christmas Lights Spectacular" - walk round the neighbourhood voting for best lights "Gift Wrapping workshop" - stamp some brown paper with potato print stars or whatever and teach them how to wrap a parcel "Charity donation day" - declutter old toys Shoebox appeal shopping trip (not sure how early that needs to be done) Voucher for a day off chores - valid from January

Wow, just out of interest, those of you who do it like this, do you work?

I work 4 days a week, DD has clubs until the 10th December, has school until the 16th (secondary, so lots of homework). No way could I pull this off each day, I would be exhausted when Christmas comes.

We do things on the weekends and the odd thing under the week after school is out but even in primary school I wouldn't have done this.

I do them for my 3. Chocolate or sweet every day and then occasional special treats.
I've done lego figures, animal figurines, fossils, gems. Key is not to try and do something unique/exciting everyday- they'll be happy with chocolates.