The countdown has begun. It's the 1st of December, the start to my favourite month of the year. As a child I always loved having an advent calendar to count away the days of this magical month. The early morning ceremonial act of opening each little door to find a festive image full of promise of what was to come. These were the days before character-based chocolate filled calendars - just a Christmassy scene, maybe with a dusting of silver glitter if it was a posh one.

Every year I set myself a task of tracking down calendars for my two that are a bit different, and some years I've hit jackpot with some beautiful ones. This year however I decided to have a go at making them. 

I hung them on their bedroom doors for them to find when they got home from school yesterday - hoping that mum's homemade ones would be the right side of OK, even though they weren't bright yellow Minion ones.

They both absolutely loved them and are are so excited about opening their daily envelopes. Most are filled with small chocolate coins and christmas foil-wrapped chocolates, but there are a few other bits such as badges, stickers, mini honeycomb-paper decorations and a voucher for a dvd rental from the local library.

They were pretty easy to make. The wooden ring is the inner ring of an embroidery hoop. I secured some green foliage (which smells so Christmassy) with some florist wire and added a few wire-strung baubles. The deer is an inexpensive tree decoration that I stuck on with hot glue. I placed the daily treasures into brown paper envelopes onto which I had stamped the numbers 1 to 24, hole-punched and strung to the hoop with bakers twine.

Let the countdown begin ....