Most fantastic advent calendar?

November 7, 2015 11:17 AM

I'm looking for a great pre-filled advent calendar that I can order online. Ideally under $30, and I want a surprise variety of things!

Edible things are fine, but I don't want just 24 chocolates or 24 bags of tea. I'm not into Lego or looking for fandom-specific calendars. Pretty things, colorful things, design-y things, animal things (like...toys, not meat), things I can fiddle with...all good. Send your favorites my way!

posted by Ragini to Shopping (7 answers total)

How about making your own Adventkalendar? That way it'd be a lot of fun and very authentic, too. You could even just use brown paper lunch bags: write the numbers on them and you're good to go! Admittedly, this takes a lot of time so it might not really be an option but I totally recommend it if you do.
posted by smorgasbord at 2:51 PM on November 7, 2015

I spent a while looking online for my own interest, procrastinating on other things. Catering to the adult crowd are mainly lady-centric ones like skincare and makeup, manicures, jewelry, beard oil. And always there are beer calendars. The liquor advent calendars - whisky, gin, rum, vodka are pricey, but offer great selection. There are some on etsy like this one with woodland creatures ornaments.

And otherwise they're tea, chocolates, and Lego calendars.

If you truly want a surprise variety, why not arrange an "advent calendar swap" with a friend? Agree on a total price limit and exchange by the end of November.

OR, you buy yourself 24 christmas crackers, put numbers on them, display them however you like, and open one a day. On edit, looks like the options for christmas crackers are quite extensive.
posted by lizbunny at 3:14 PM on November 7, 2015

This Walnut Surprise Advent Calendar from etsy sounds fascinating and but it's $70.
posted by ilovewinter at 4:45 PM on November 7, 2015

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a number of nice ones.
posted by gudrun at 5:35 PM on November 7, 2015

Not much out there if you want real diversity - they all tend to have fairly narrow themes. My suggestion builds on the one from lizbunny - get together a group of people to organize an advent swap. Buy a bunch of little, interchangeable containers. I like these little colored takeout boxes or you could use paper bags. If you get multiple colors, make sure each person gets an equal number of each color. Set a budget and some guidelines and have everyone buy 24 little items, seal them in the boxes and bring them to the swap. When you get to the swap, set them out, grouped by donor. Each person collects a sampling from each donor and you take home a mix of surprising elements. Since they all look like, you won't know which ones were yours, so even though will be a surprise to open. Once you get home, number the boxes for full Advent experience.
posted by metahawk at 8:48 PM on November 7, 2015

It's quite possible that by 'Lego' you meant 'small toys aimed at kids', but just in case you really only meant Lego, Playmobil makes some nice advent calendars. They generally have both Christmasy and non Christmasy themes. We are happy with ours.
posted by telepanda at 6:49 AM on November 8, 2015

I've been on the same hunt (but for my kids) and I've noticed that the UK has a much more established tradition of advent calendars than we do in the US. I haven't found the ideal one yet, but one place to look is amazon.co.uk -- most of the sellers will take your money and ship to the US.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:56 AM on November 10, 2015