This year I obeyed the adage that you should shop out of season to get bargains and spent my summer car boot visits hunting for Christmas books. My mission was to find enough to make up an alternative Advent calendar - an Advent basket!
My little girl was expecting to get the usual type of
calendar with a tiny chocolate hidden behind each door. She was
thrilled with this version as not only does she get a chocolate coin,
she also gets a Christmas themed book to read.
The books cost me just a few pence each plus I had a few from previous years so collecting together 25 did not cost much at all. I wrapped them up in some cheap coloured craft paper,
added a chocolate coin and stuck on a label which I'd got my
daughter to write. She didn't know what she was writing them for so was
delighted to see them on the packages. They all sit in order in a
basket decorated with tinsel. Each morning, the first thing my daughter
does is go to the basket to find the parcel, eat the chocolate - and
then sit down to look at the book.
