Advent Calendar

Today is December 1st and this marks the official beginning of Christmas time in our house.

A tradition in Europe is the Advent calendar. When I was young it was a picture (usually of a winter or Christmas scene) where you could open little windows and in each window you got a picture of something Christmas-y (a candle, an ornament, Christmas cookies, and so on). 24 windows to open and then Christmas was here.

This simple calendar of my youth morphed into something a little bit more so nowadays many Advent calendars consist of 24 little parcels filled with small gifts and/or sweets.

Each year I make an Advent calendar for my daughter. This year 24 snowmen inhabit her desk carrying some pages of a Christmas novel and some sweets in their bellies.

I really loved doing these little fellows. I crocheted a hat and a matching scarf for each one (although it took me only 20 minutes to crochet one set that means 8 hours of crocheting all in all).

Here are some of the guys

and here is the whole gang.

And each year I get an Advent calendar from my daughter as well. This year there are 24 small houses filled with goodies.

What about these scrolls you want to know? Well, I love to read (and quite a lot I have to say) and my daughter is a bookworm as well. So for many years now my Advent calendar consists of scrolls with the first sentence of one of my (more than 800) books and I try to find, guess or know the book (I have to brag that I know quite a lot of first sentences). Oh, I just love this and am usually rather sad when this time of the year is over.

I wish you all a merry pre-Christmas time and hope you all have an Advent calendar as well.