2023 has been a pretty tough year, so I decided to step back and haven’t been posting to give myself time to focus on getting my head on straight. I won’t be posting a lot in December, but wanted to take a moment to share my advent calendars for this year.

Unlike last year, I kept things pretty simple this year and am only doing 3 advents. I put all of these together myself, so no store bought ones this year and two of them are the same as last year.

First is my candy advent. My mom made me a refillable advent about 20 years ago. It has strings to tie on the gifts. I had packed it up for a while, but decided to get it back out last year. This year I again purchased some of the old fashioned candy sticks that I have tied to the strings. Each day I get a candy stick of varying flavors.

Next is the wooden box refillable advent that I bought myself three years ago. Like last year, I decided to focus this box on enamel pins and purchased an assortment. So that I wouldn’t know which pins were in each drawer, I had mom fill the drawers for me. As a surprise, she also added a quarter to each drawer.

My third and final advent is something new that I put together for myself this year- a book advent. Earlier in the year I picked out a selection of discount books that I ordered and then wrapped with plain brown kraft paper and got stickers to number them. Each day I am unwrapping a new book.

If you follow me on Instagram, I am posting photos of what I open each day.