Over the years I seem to have accumulated more and more ways of counting down the Advent period, and it is now becoming quite an undertaking to keep on top of them all! However, they do bring me a lot of pleasure and I thought that I would share them here.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without an advent calendar and I traditionally stick to the ones with pictures rather than chocolate. I favour a German calendar, preferably featuring gnomes(!), and last year was very excited when my daughter introduced me to the Medici shop in London’s South Kensington which had so many that fitted the bill that it was hard to choose. This year I didn’t have a chance to make a day trip to London so needed to buy locally and struggled to find the perfect one. In the end I decided that it was best to go for something completely different and, as I love hares, ended up with this design by Angela Harding. It is undeniably beautiful, but most of the doors have had a picture of a different bird behind them, and although I like birds and I like nature, I have found it more wintery than Christmassy, so it has been a little bit disappointing and next year I will have to start my hunt earlier.

Last year, I discovered the Roger la Borde 3D pop and slot advent calendars, and loved the idea of adding a new piece to the scene every day. It was so hard to choose just one as they are all so lovely, but I opted for this winter woodland. It is reuseable and makes a lovely decoration.

This is Mr Moosington, who sits on the mantlepiece and every day climbs one step further up the Christmas tree. He came from a wonderful shop in Oxford that was next door to my daughter’s college, and as well as being an absolute delight of an old fashioned wooden decoration, he brings her happy memories of university days and me of visiting her there.

We have lots of candle lighting going on and our table is pretty much full of them. As well as the candIes on the advent wreath, we have the classic advent candle, marked with the twenty four days that we burn down every evening, and I also have a little Danish wooden pig advent candle holder, who has a new candle to light each day. This initially started after a trip to Ikea a few years ago, when I happened to pick up a pack of twenty four numbered candles.. I haven’t had the opportunity to go back at Christmas since then so I don’t know whether they still do them, but I now improvise and number plain candles myself with acrylic paint pens! Unfortunately, the pig sports some burn marks from where I carelessly let a candle burn right down without noticing, which makes me a little bit sad, but it does serve as a warning not to do it again!

Although not specifically for Advent, last year I found this pretty angel candle holder in a charity shop in Rye for just £1. I snapped it up and absolutely love it. It has definite Scandi vibes and is very cute – although the fact that it requires six candles at a time means that it doesn’t tend to get lit every day.

And on a similar theme, I also have a set of angel chimes. As a child, one of my most treasured books was Richard Scarry’s Bedtime Book of 365 stories. I would diligently read one every day, but my favourite story was about a girl who, to cheer up a miserable January day, got out the Christmas angel chimes

Oh, how I loved the idea of lighting tiny candles to make the angels spin around and ring the bells. There was nothing like it in 1970’s England, and candles were only ever used during power cuts, not as decorations. The story always stayed with me, so imagine my delight when, in my 20s, I actually saw a set of angel chimes in a shop! I had to buy them, and although mine are a bit tarnished (I can never get them to sparkle like Jenny’s in the story, no matter how much I try and polish them) and are quite temperamental (they always spin but quite often don’t chime) they still give me immense pleasure.

A new addition this year has been my Advent Activity jar, which I created in an attempt to try and make time to do something nice every day, instead of getting caught up in a whirlwind of chores and to fightback against the inevitable commercialism. I made a list of twenty four Christmassy things that I wanted to do, wrote them down on festive paper, and put them in a jar to pull out as a lucky dip.

There’s a whole range of things from baking and crafting, to listening to Christmas carols, and getting out and about looking at lights. Some of the highlights have been making Christmas cards (I experimented with block printing), decorating a gingerbread house and knitting a Christmas pickle tree decoration.

Although originally intended just for me, it has turned into a family activity. A group chat was set up and I post a picture of that day’s activity first thing in the morning, and we compare notes and photos at the end of the day. It does sometimes become a little competitive which, combined with the fact that I am spending so long doing all these lovely things that I have no time for any of the more necessary Christmas preparations (or housework!), means that on occasion it can be quite stressful. Overall however, it has really helped me make the most of December and we have all been enjoying seeing what the day’s activity is going to be. It is definitely something that I will continue with in the future and I would thoroughly recommend giving it a go.