When I was a kid we always had the little cardboard advent calendars that you buy at the grocery store. Each morning I eagerly opened the little perforated door to reveal the daily chocolate piece. Sometime as my sister and I aged, the tradition faded. I went many years without one of those precious little boxes until my first year at university when my parents remembered that tradition and sent another of those calendars my way.

After that first year at university, however, the tradition died altogether. A calendar didn’t get sent to me and I never bought one for myself. Despite the fact that I haven’t counted down advent in that way in many years, more than 10 in fact, I have certainly longed to do so.

That longing persisted and became too strong to resist this year. This first advent with my babe.

Even though I have such positive memories of the advent calendars of my childhood, I couldn’t resist doing something a little more. Especially with all the inspiration around the web.

The first calendar I saw that really stuck with me was a few years ago over at Martha Stewart. (No idea why I was there.) I had every intention of making one just like it for us this year, I even started collecting adorable holiday themed baby socks. But that ended up being the problem. I got three pairs and got stuck. I couldn’t seem to find anymore, before the holidays, at a price I was willing to pay. After the holidays might be a different story.

So I started moving on and looking around for other ideas. I saw one over at Purl Bee. Wisecraft has a gorgeous one, as well. This one is gorgeous too. But I was put off by the sewing, and the embroidering, and the time that I didn’t have, as it was already the end of November, and my opportunities to craft are limited.

I kept looking, finding lots of ideas for why to do advent and what to put inside the calendar, but never finding just the right idea for our family. Until one night, lying in bed of course, I thought about filling the base of our tiny christmas tree with 25 miniature presents.

So, that’s just what we did. I folded 50 boxes using paper scraps I had around. Aaron made the numbered gift tags.

We filled the boxes and now all there is to do is wait, eagerly for each morning when we open the box to reveal what’s inside. (More on that another time!)

The calendar is perfect and even though I know what is inside, I put it there after all, I still feel that same sense of anticipation, excitement and wonder as we open the box at breakfast each morning. Ewan certainly won’t remember this advent but I am hoping that when we repeat the tradition next year he will get a chance to feel the same way I do. We all deserve a little bit of wonder in our lives.