NINE [FANTASTIC] NON-CHOCOLATE ADVENT CALENDARS 2017

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Our living room bookcases are currently completely overrun with advent calendars at the moment, with three very excited little boys waiting to see if anything can possibly be as exciting as opening a chocolate advent calendar door every morning.  This year we decided to invest in a few, non-chocolate advent calendars, and we were sent a few also to take a look at.  The boys are waiting excitedly to reveal their contents every day in December – below are the calendars we’ve fallen in love with this year.1. Disney Marvel Tsum-Tsum

Tsums are big in our house, they LOVE them.  Squishy ones, plushy ones, micro ones – they are everywhere.  We don’t have any Marvel Tsums yet and Yotie is so squeakingly happy that he keeps recounting the days until he can open door one.  Initially I had a huge panic because I completely missed the sale of the Disney Store Tsum Tsum calendars when Grandad went into hospital, and so when this popped up on the Tesco Direct website, I was overjoyed – at £25 for 24 days of surprises, I’m going to guess that it’s very worth it.

2. Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mega Bloks

Our boys have never had Mega Bloks despite seeing them featuring Minions in Toys R Us and so this time we decided that they could have this to see what they’re like.  Inside is a little set to build including pizzas and a turtle with interchangeable bandanas.  Hero loves that he’s in it [Casey Jones] and Jensen wants to see Shredder but is sad Master Splinter isn’t in this one.  This is currently on sale at around £12.

3. LEGO Star Wars

This will be the third year that we have a Star Wars LEGO calendar.  Jensen LOVES opening the windows every morning to assemble something – or get a Christmas themed Star Wars character.  The calendar is pretty good value in our eyes at around £20-£25, depending on where and when you buy it. 4. Disney Tsum-Tsum Calendar

This is Hero’s calendar.  Finally being three years old this Christmas, he’s allowed to officially be the proud owner of mini squishy Tsums.  This calendar features holiday-themed Tsums and should be quite like the calendar Yotie had last year.  Again, there are 24 days of surprises and are bound to be excellent value.

5. Vtech Toot-Toot Animals*

This one makes me smile more now that I’ve been watching Dave Gorman’s Modern Life is Good-ish programme.  If you’ve seen the one about the Toot-Toot vehicles you’ll know what I’m talking about and if not, well, a prank got out of hand and he ended up switching English toot-toot vehicles with foreign language vehicles to prank his other parent friends.  This calendar looks amazing with a little reindeer peeping out of the front of the box to test.  Hero is guarding this shelf very carefully.  This one is around £25 and we love Vtech because the quality is amazing.

6. Playmobil Jewel Thief Advent Calendar

Admittedly, jewel thieves aren’t the first Playmobil people that spring to mind when I think of Christmas calendars, but the boys’ eyes lit up when they saw this one.  Prisons are a huge favourite of the boys [let’s hope this isn’t a future career aspiration] and they love locking up any little characters that they can.  This is our second year of Playmobil in our lives and we love it.  The calendar is again around £20, depending on offers.7. The Goof Elf Calendar*

There’s nothing the boys love more during advent than Elves.  They’re amazingly fickle and love any elf from any company to join our family.  Jensen had his first elf for his first Christmas [Mack Mack] and the elf family which visits us every year has grown and grown.  This year we have two new Elves, the first being in this box and just adorable.  He’s brightly coloured instead of the usual Christmas hues, and They love that he comes with a little countdown to Christmas hanging board and stickers to win if you’ve been a Good Elf each day, and we also have the reward chart which I’m looking forward to opening this year.  It’s big enough for three little people [hooray] and has tasks like cleaning teeth, going to bed nicely and doing a good deed on it.  At £12.99 it’s a great investment.

8. Haribo*

Haribo have really impressed me this year with their Christmas themed sweets.  Usually I’m stood in the supermarket griping to myself that all companies seem to do is brand the packaging “Christmas” but do nothing to change the contents in any way to celebrate Christmas [other than Mr. Kipling and his Frosty Fancies] but this year we have Christmas tree shaped Haribo, Winterland sweets and even Rudolph shaped gummies.  They sent us some of their crackers and Christmas baubles for our tree and I’ve hidden them because they’d be empty by now if I hadn’t – and not just because of the boys. *cough*husband *cough*  I saw that these were available at B & M for £5.

9. 12 Days of Christmas Beauty Products, Mad Beauty*

This is the loveliest of the Christmas pampering calendars for younger people, and although we have three boys here, they also have three female cousins who loved the look of this calendar and voted for it.  12 days of hand cream, body wash, nails files and bath salts – even a lip balm all in festive packaging.  It’s brilliant value at around £12 again and although I’d have liked to keep it, Princess Violet is going to be opening this one for us to look at.  The Mad Beauty site has SO many cute Christmas products that I fell in love with too, including gingerbread and snowmen, and robin themed cosmetics!

Only THREE days to go…

*PR Samples received by us.