Christmas is Coming! Time to Choose an Advent Calendar!

PackThePJs love a good Advent Calendar. But with so many options out there, which one do we choose? Well, this year we thought we’d pick out our favourites to showcase. However, we’re not going to spoil the surprise and show the contents – because we’re not opening them! Not until 1 December anyway. And then we’ll upload the content from each one to Instagram daily. I should point out that some, not all, of the calendars have been gifted to us for our opinions. Ooh this is so exciting …

Advent Calendar 1: Ales by Mail’s Craft Beer Advent Calendar

You know this one is going to be good when the courier offers to carry it into your house because it’s so heavy! You’ve probably guessed what this advent calendar is all about … 24 bottles of hand-picked bottled craft beers presented in a one-a-day advent calendar case. The perfect festive season gift to help any beer fan survive the madness of December! The advent calendar features 24 different beers, each presented behind easy to remove numbered windows. There is a selection of Award winning UK and imported beers. There’s various beer styles, including IPAs, saison, lager, blonde ales and many more! All of them are 330ml bottles. Needless to say, Huw’s chomping at the bit wishing Friday would hurry up 🙂

RRP: £74.50

Link to purchase: AlesbyMailBeerAdvent

Ales by Mail also offer a ‘make your own beer advent calendar’ where you chose your own 24 bottles to be packaged.

Advent Calendar 2: ‘Beauty in Wonderland’ by lookfantastic

To call this advent calendar impressive, is an understatement! It’s beautiful, and it’s large, and it’s heavy. I am really excited to look through the drawers each day to find the numbered boxes. Inside the drawers are 25 beauty treats – 9 of them are full-sized, 16 are deluxe samples, and 19 of them are exclusive to lookfantastic. The cost of the content exceeds £300. I cannot wait to see what’s inside! After Christmas, the strong drawer box can be used as a vanity unit – my daughter has already made plans for it!

RRP: £79.00

Link to purchase: lookfantastic_adventcalendar

Advent Calendar 3: Kelloggs Variety Advent Calendar

’24 Bowls ‘Til Christmas‘

What a brilliant way to countdown the days until Christmas! With this advent calendar you get 24 individual portions of cereals – 8 different types. These include Frosties, Rice Krispies, Coco Pops and Cornflakes. As well as being fun and functional, it’s also very reasonably priced at just £4.00.

RRP: £4.00

Link to purchase: Tesco stores or online (currently sold out online)

Advent Calendar 4: Haynes ‘Build Your Own FM Radio’ Advent Calendar

Now this advent calendar is perfect for Huw and Toby. It’s going to be a dad-son collaboration through the month of December. There are 24 x daily tasks that you follow using the easy step-by-step instructions. It promises not to be complicated – no soldering required! Every piece fits into place. On the back of the box is a cut out retro radio case – so you really will have a working radio on Christmas morning! This looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s educational too (but shhh, don’t tell Toby that).

RRP: £14.99

Link to purchase: Haynes_AdventCalendar

Advent Calendar 5: Mad Beauty 12 Days of Christmas

This triangle of loveliness has been adopted by Millie-Mae. But I don’t think she realises she will have to wait until Christmas Day before she can open the first door! You see the 12 Days of Christmas STARTS on Christmas Day, and you open a door each day until 5th January 2018. This means that Mad Beauty’s 12 Days of Christmas Advent Calendar makes a fantastic gift … especially for hard-to-shop-for teenagers. I love the design of this, and the packaging of the products within it. It’s very festive 🙂

RRP: £10.99

Link to purchase: MadBeauty_AdventCalendar

Advent Calendar 6: Drinks By The Dram’s ‘The Whisky Advent Calendar’

This is one for the whisky drinkers among us! (That’ll be me and Huw then.) 24 different fine whiskies from around the world. Each one presented in a handmade, 30ml wax-sealed dram. This bounty includes single grain and rare single malts. They are award-winning whiskies, from famous distilleries. Speysides … Island malts … Taiwanese whisky! Some, if in a full bottle, would cost up to £600. I’m really rather looking forward to 1st December. Cheers!

RRP: £149.95

Link to purchase: DrinksByTheDram_WhiskyAdventCalendar

Advent Calendar 7: Schleich Farm World Advent Calendar

This is the advent calendar picked by Millie-Mae this year. Well, not quite. Mummy made a mistake. She wanted the Schleich Horse Club one, but I misunderstood, and that’s now out of stock everywhere. Oops. Still, this one looks as good! She is a huge Schleich fan. And she loves farm animals. This lovely advent calendar has 24 farm items, including 6 animals. I know that she’ll be playing with this for years. She’s even using stop motion animation to bring her Schleich horses to life … so by Christmas Day she’ll have 6 new cast members!

RRP: £22.40

Link to purchase: SchleichFarmWorld_AdventCalendar

Advent Calendar 8: Revell Control Radio Control XS Crawler Advent Calendar

This is Toby’s chosen 2017 advent calendar. The box is HUGE! Over 24 days he will build a fully functional remote control monster truck. The truck measures 27.5cm long x 15.5cm tall and wide. It’s aimed at children over 8 years old. It looks an incredible project. Most of the information on the box is in French, so won’t know how easy/difficult it will be until 1st December onwards. If he ends up with a remote control truck that he’s built himself, he’ll be really chuffed!

RRP: £34.99

Link to purchase: RevellControl_AdventCalendar

Advent Calendar 9: The Good Elf Sleeps Until Christmas

Ackerman have a range of products called ‘Sleepzzz Until’. This is a collection of products to help your little ones to understand how many sleeps until a special day – birthday, family holiday etc. Sometimes it can be hard for children to understand how long it is until these special occasions. The Good Elf will certainly help with ‘how many sleeps till Santa comes?’ The Good Elf is available in both boy and girl versions. The set includes: One soft Elf approx. 30cm tall; One Calendar with tear off slips counting down from 24 days before Christmas; Stickers to reward extra special behaviour.

RRP: £12.99

Link to purchase: TheGoodElf_AdventCalendar

Advent Calendar 10: Tesco Advent Calendar for Cats

We can hardly leave poor Supercat Roddy out this Christmas! This advent calendar has treats behind the 24 doors. Roddy is going to love it!

RRP: £3.00

Link to purchase: Available in Tesco stores, or online TescoAdventCalendarForCats

Advent Calendar 11: Pets at Home Double Treat Advent Calendar for Dogs

I don’t think Izzy and Jack would be happy watching Roddy get a daily treat from his cat advent calendar – so we’ve bought them one too! This is a great advent calendar from Pets at Home as on each day there’s two treats (one for each spaniel). I’m pleased to say that none of the treats are rawhide (I don’t let my dogs chew rawhide). I think they are going to love these daily treats. We shall report back!

RRP: £4.00

Link to purchase: Available in Pets at Home stores, or online PetsatHomeDoubleTreatAdventCalendar

Advent Calendar 12: Pokemon Advent Calendar by Kinnerton

We can’t do an advent calendar round up without including one traditional chocolate one. We chose this Pokemon one, because we’re huge Pokemon (and PokemonGo) fans. It really didn’t have anything to do with the ‘Chunkier Chocolate for the final five days’ stamp on the front! This calendar is made in Norfolk, UK by Kinnerton and has no artificial flavours and is nut safe. I’m excited to see if the chocolates are character shaped!

RRP: £2.00

Link to purchase: Available in Matalan, Tesco, Toys’R’Us stores, or online PokemonAdventCalendar

So this concludes our 2017 Advent Calendar round up. But it’s far from over … During December we shall upload each day’s ‘treat’ to our Instagram account. Please pop over and join us there: www.instagram.com/packthepjs x

End note: Would you like your products included in our Gift Guides? Please add us to your mailing list tracey@packthepjs.com and huw@packthepjs.com x