My 2018 Advent Calendar

It’s been a little while since I last posted. It was in November to be precise. I’ve had a very busy December (as always). For a bit of fun, here is a video I’ve made about my 2018 homemade advent calendar. I hope you enjoy it!


SPOILER ALERT!
If you’d rather read what I’m talking about (or perhaps you’re at work or somewhere you can’t easily watch), below you will find a list of the gifts I received in my homemade advent calendar…

About the calendar

This was a three-way collaboration with my Mum and my sister. Between us we sourced gifts to go in advent calendars that we could open during December, to avoid the temptation of purchasing a costly advent calendar which hardly has any items in it that we would like. As the 3 of us know each other well we could cater our gifts to our tastes, and create a varied advent calendar which didn’t just contain beauty items, or just alcohol items, or just chocolate…

My 2018 Advent Calendar
The advent calendar hung underneath a reindeer decoration on our living room door.


Here’s what I got - I’ve put in brackets who provided each gift item:

1st: Purple nail polish (Mum)
2nd: Reindeer earrings (Sister)
3rd: Tweezers (Mum)
4th: Face mask and flannel (Sister)
5th: Youth maximising serum (Mum) is she trying to tell me something?!

My 2018 Advent Calendar, reindeer earrings
These are the reindeer earrings I received on day 2.


6th: Cat ring (Sister)
7th: Avon brown eye liner (Mum)
8th: Ferrero Rocher & Raffaello chocolates (Sister)
9th: Snow Bites choclates (Mum)
10th: Colourful bird brooch (Sister)

My 2018 Advent Calendar, cat ring
This is the cat ring I received on day 6.


11th: Hand warmer pack (Mum)
12th: L’Oreal infallible foundation (Sister)
13th: Sticky notes (Mum)
14th: Moon and owl necklace (Sister)
15th: 2019 calendar (Mum)

My 2018 Advent Calendar, 2019 calendar
This is the 2019 calendar I got on day 15.


16th: Hot chocolate sachet, quirky spoon and Lindt Lindor chocolate (Sister)
17th: Go go goji berries (Mum)
18th: Face mask and flannel (Sister)
19th: Green sparkly glass bead bracelet (Mum)
20th: Panda post-it notes (Sister)

My 2018 Advent Calendar, my green glass bead bracelet.
This was the green sparkly glass bead bracelet I opened on day 19.


21st: Pink exfoliating gloves (Mum)
22nd: Wish necklace (Sister)
23rd: “More Boo’s” shiny orange martini glass (Mum)
24th: Can of pre-mixed gin & tonic (Sister)

My 2018 Advent Calendar, more boo's orange martini glass.
My penultimate gift was this martini glass - perfect for halloween!

Would I do it again?

Absolutely! This was a wonderful way to lead up to Christmas, it was exciting to see what was wrapped up each day. I’m not sure that the cost ended up being that much less than a mainstream beauty advent calendar would have been, but it was a talking point among friends and family and I found this so much more fun than having a shelf-bought calendar.

Sadly I didn’t keep a note of how much I spent on the 24 items I sourced for my Mum/Sister (12 for each of them), but I think it was in the region of £25-£30.

I would highly recommend having fun with this kind of homemade advent calendar if you have at least 1 other person to do it with.

My 2018 Advent Calendar, all of my 24 advent calendar items.
Here's all of the 24 advent calendar items.


Do you enjoy trying new ideas or different angles on existing traditions? Did you like the idea of my homemade advent calendar? I’d love to hear your thoughts…


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My 2018 Advent Calendar, pinterest image


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Previous & Next Posts

backward arrow for previous post   forward arrow for next post In my last post I reviewed my 2018 goals.
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