I’m not really keen on chocolate advent calendars for little kids, and so I find the increasing trend of toy advent calendars
quite a fun idea. As well as the excitement of counting down to Christmas, your children get to build up a collection of something, which quite often ends up as a nice Christmas scene or similar.
Another increasingly popular trend is to collect together 24 books for your kids, and wrap them up so that your children get to unwrap one a day in the lead up to Christmas – a reading advent calendar. It needn’t cost a lot; the books can be second hand, from charity shops or library sales, or even just books that have sat forgotten on the shelves in your own home. A fabulous example of this idea is this Book Advent Ladder at Capture by Lucy.
I really love the book idea and would have loved to do it this year, but with all the moving drama we can’t do something that occupies that much physical space! My parents have a stash of children’s books and toys, so we are only taking a small selection of absolute favourites with us to Cornwall – especially with the prospect of all those Christmas presents too!
When I saw an eBay listing for a small “dress up & go” Dora doll & fairly big collection of clothes and accessories, I decided to do Georgie a rather more portable Dora advent calendar instead. The stuff is all from one of those collectible magazines; readers got the doll in the first issue and then could buy a new magazine with a free outfit each week. I found a listing for five new magazines & outfits, which included a Christmas outfit, and bought that too.
The whole lot cost me less than £15, and we have five magazines to enjoy throughout December as well.
James and I sorted out the best 23 outfits and then wrapped up Dora for day 1, and one outfit a day after that. We used brown tape, stamps & washi tape to make the little packages look exciting for Georgie to unwrap, and then decorated a repurposed Nonabox to put them all into.
We are putting together a Christmas Eve box for the girls, so I am putting Dora’s little Christmas outfit into that box as a little extra something.
I hope she likes it! She has been watching loads of Dora the Explorer lately on Netflix, so fingers crossed she will be delighted to have a little Dora of her own to go on adventures with.
@Nonabox_UK take a look at what I’ve done with my empty Nonabox 🙂
@zoecorkhill I’m in the middle of writing a uses for your old @Nonabox_UK post. Do you mind if I link to you in it?
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