Creating and filling your own or a loved one’s advent calendar can bring a whole new layer of cheer to the festive season. For older children, shop-bought chocolate advent calendars can sometimes feel childish as they’re often decorated with cartoons or characters from this year’s big kids film. In contrast, shop-bought advent calendars targeted towards adults, often filled with makeup or luxury treats, can seem quite pricey. Filling a homemade advent calendar means you can choose a suitable design, save on some cash, and still enjoy counting down ‘til Christmas. For adults that revel in that great countdown, filling advent calendars could also be a great activity between couples or friends; fill the compartments in each other’s with cute little gifts you’ll know they’ll love, and you’ll get the same in return.
The great thing about an advent calendar you use yourself is that the actual calendar can be used year after year, bringing an excellent opportunity for you and your loved one to start a new tradition. Because they’ll be pulled out every December, it’s worth looking around for something that you love the look of.
Here at The Range, we have a collection of beautiful pre-made, empty advent calendars just waiting to be filled with goodies. Designed with traditionally festive colour schemes or elegant, snow-like glitter, these ornamental calendars will fit right in with your Christmas décor.
Can’t quite find something you like? Making your calendar from scratch is a great excuse to start the Christmas crafts a little earlier. If you’re handy with a sewing needle, you can easily make up some Santa sacks or sew some pockets onto a beautiful stretch of fabric. For those who want something more heavy-duty, consider upcycling some old jewellery or storage boxes by giving them a new lick of paint and sticking on some festive sequins.
The daily treat is the best thing about an advent calendar, but trying to think of 25 little gifts to place in each day’s box can be difficult. Here are some sweet ideas that anyone is bound to love:
- Chocolate & Sweets: The timeless classic of advent calendars. Find some inexpensive yet festively fancy sweets and tuck them away into a few days for an easy pleaser.
- Makeup & Beauty Products: Little lip-glosses and balms, single pallets of eyeshadow, fun packets of cosmetic glitter, perfume samples… the possibilities are endless. Whoever’s opening the calendar will love trying out their new gift as they prepare for the day.
- Hair Accessories & Jewellery: Extremely easy to pick up in a shop around Christmas time, pairs of cute earrings, colourful necklaces, novelty clips and hairbands are bound to go down right.
- Teabags: This might seem odd, but you can find many different teas, whether classic and fancy or new and fun-tasting. They can look forward to trying a new cup of tea at the end of the day as you all settle down for a cosy evening.
- Badges & Pins: Especially great for teenagers who love personalising their school bags and blazers, badges and pins can show off a whole load of different interests and often have cute and colourful designs.
- Candles: Small tealights might be the perfect size to slip into a pocket, and around Christmas time, you'll find a whole mass of fun and exciting scents. Whoever's opening the advent calendar will spend all day excited to get home so they can light up the candle and let the smell spread about their room.
- Sweet Messages: Ideal if the person you’re making the advent calendar for is super close to you, a loving message or poem telling them how much they mean to you will surely bring a tear to their eye, a smile to their face, and a warm heart for the rest of the day.
Once you've filled and finished the advent calendar, all that's left is to hang it on the wall or place it on a convenient shelf, ready for you to open each morning. With every little gift, you'll know that Christmas Day is one sleep closer, and you can start getting really excited!
