Tell me about your advent calendars.

[pinkksugarmouse]

It’s not a thing I do but then there isn’t anything in any calendar I have seen that suits me. I’m allergic to alcohol. I’m a soap & water girl no cosmetics and don’t wear makeup and I am vegan so that cuts out a lot of the food ones.
But I watch YouTubers who open advent calendars and find it fascinating and do you think they (or maybe last years one) is value for money?
Please stay nice. It’s meant as a lighthearted thread.

I don't think they're value for money unless you get them heavily reduced. The Tony's Chocolonely one was £15, and contained 225g of chocolate. Their usual bars are 185g for £3.50 so it's an enormous markup.

We have reusable ones and I buy little chocolates coins and chocolate reindeers from aldi so they cost about £2 each. This year the kids are 5 and 2 so I've put some little extras in some of the drawers, like a balloon or bouncy ball or hair clip.

I got the Bonne Maman one for ds this year and he's really enjoying it. I have the M&S beauty one and I love it!

Im stuck in the house this December so got myself a tea one - I’m really enjoying it! I drink tea anyway so trying lots of different ones, and so far luckily all have been pretty nice.

Wow that's super. Will try to find one!

I got my Tony’s ones for the DC from Ocado last month and they were £10.

The RRP was £15 and I saw them for that price in Sainsbury's and Oxfam.

Some of them are. As I said, my daughter's Essence make-up calendar was 20 EUR, which would make each item if make-up less than 1 EUR. That's a massive discount as it contains really nice items. Every times I made an advent calendar myself and filled it with random bits and pieces it turned out more expensive.

Apologies for the typos

We have a reusable one, which we have used for years. This one: www.takatomo.de/en/fabelab-advent-calendar-copenhagen.html

I put a mixture of chocolate, cards, face masks, gems etc in.

This year I also have a Clinique one from dh and he has a beer one. The kids have picture ones that we reopen every year too.

If she will use all the products it might work out good value, but if there are 3 or 4 items she doesn't want - colours she doesn't like for example - then the value for money goes down. Essence make up is only £1-3 per item anyway, its quite a cheap brand.

Meh I probably wouldn’t have paid £15 but £10 I’m happy with as they are gigantic, have great fair trade messages in, are good quality doors that don’t collapse by 15th etc. I don’t think you can compare to a bar or chocolate, that’s missing the point somewhat. But each to their own!

We have a build your own wooden tree and decorations one from the works, but so far we’ve had 3d in a row of plain tiny round wood but no paint yet to start decorating them much to my DD annoyance. I may have to find which door the paint is behind!

Xou say that but there is an Essence juicy bomb lip gloss on ebay for £119 😂no joke. It costs about 60 cents in Germany, but due to Brexit it's really hard to get these in the UK and they seem to be very desirable among teens

That's crazy! They seem to have essence stuff available to buy from Wilko online for a few quid

I have the pork scratching one which is lovely ( if you like pork scratching ) , my husband has the M&S biscuit one which is very nice and our daughter has the M&S dachshund chocolate one ( it’s GF) . The dog has a scrambles one which he seems to like .

Yep, totally crazy (see photo) but the lip gloss appears to be out of stock in most places. It's a great idea gor a business if you can get your hands on juicy bomb in Germany to import it to the UK 😂

I have an old fashioned one with pictures, like I had when I was a kid! I go to great lengths to try to find a secular one as I am not Christian, this year's one has woodland creatures behind each door.

My dc have several others - there's a calendar with 24 little buckets to fill with tiny things which I collect during the year, they have a harry potter one with little trinkets in, there's also a cardboard treehouse with the dc's names over the tiny door and you add an extra decoration each day, and there's a magnetic tree that you stick a bauble on each day (this one was from when they were toddlers and I expected to be retired by now, but seems to have become a tradition).

I realise this will look excessive to some people, but I enjoy it, as do the dc, and it isn't hurting anyone.

We normally have a reusable that we fill for each other but with a new baby we decided to make things easier this year and get the Bonne Maman one to share.

It’s turned into a nice little morning ritual. One of us opens it and reads out the French on the pot and we both try to see if we can translate it (which was fine when it was strawberry, less so when it was linden flower!). Then we each have a slice of toast with it on and can change our guess based on the flavour. Finally, we put it into google translate and see how correct we are.

Everyone with the tonies one, Google the surprise in last year's if you have them for kids. I won't say here and potentially spoil it, and it got some backlash last year so not sure if they've repeated it

My girls have one that's like bunting, but instead of flags it's little knitted stockings that my mum made them. This year we have little activities written on bits of paper, like make cards, play in the leaves, colour in some Xmas pictures.
I've got a Pukka one curtesy of Ocado, mum Hotel Chocolat, DH Milkybar and Dad the M&S whip one.
I wanted the Bonne Maman one but it had sold out.

There’s loads of vegan advent calendars about, go and buy one now there’re reduced!

Yes probs not suitable for under 8s!

This year I have a £1 Peppa Pig chocolate one that my mum bought me as a pisstake (I had threatened to report her to childline last year for not buying me one 😂)

Previously I’ve had the Clinique one and really enjoyed it. The biggest letdown was definitely Lindt, tiniest chocolates ever!

We always have a picture one. My kids complain, but they love it really, because we play Advent Calendar bingo. On 30th November, everyone thinks of 6 things that might be behind the doors. Then as we open them, we cross off any correct guesses. It's one of our favourite traditions. We've had the odd duff one - the Quentin Blake one had non-Christmassy things like a crocodile and a random boy - but usually it's great.

A traditional picture one as always