Designed by a company called Maileg in Denmark, these Pixies stand at nearly one and half metres high. Made from beautiful pure cotton in a gorgeous rustic, quintessentially Scandinavian style, Little Girl Pixie is something really rather special. With a tab to hang on a door or wall, her dress is covered with different size numbered pockets ready for the filling, with a rings on each hand for numbers 8 & 9, and a big pocket on her rear end for Christmas Eve.

To say I love my Caroline Gardner advent calender would be true. It’s a simple cardboard calender with the cutest nativity scene. The colours are fab and the baby Jesus adorable. For those that love Caroline Gardner’s artwork this calendar is perfect.

The Caroline Gardner Gingerbread Flora Advent Calendar is a really pretty advent calendar. It comes with a ribbon attached so you can hang it up on the wall, and an envelope so you can give it as a present. The calendar is part of a range designed by Caroline Gardner, the highly respected independent greeting card and stationery designer.

I must admit to being a bit of a Scrooge when it comes to children and advent calendars. I mean, do they really need chocolate behind the little doors? Couldn’t a nice picture making up a nativity scene suffice? It would appear not. Especially where chocolate and toy manufacturers are concerned. But if you do want an alternative to chocolate, then you can’t go far wrong with a Playmobil advent calendar range. It would seem there is one to suit nearly everybody. The advent calendar features all the attention to detail that you’d expect from Playmobil; from a golden frog on a lily pad to a net and butterflies.

The Caroline Gardner 12 Days Advent calender is a really cool contemporary design which is a little Rob Ryan-esque. It comes with a fantastic high quality envelope and a great ribbon for hanging it on.

When I unpacked the Lakeland Wooden Advent Truck I immediately loved the traditional look and Christmas feel of it. It is lovely and I love the fact that it is up to you what goes inside, whether that’s sweets or small toys. The wooden truck seemed robust and relatively well made, and it’s the sort of item you can bring out year after year.

When getting this out, I was overjoyed with the quality of the Lakeland Limited Santa’s Workshop advent, it was well packaged and the polyresin figures, toys and other Christmas bits were packaged in each of the doors with bubble wrap too. The boys couldn’t wait to get stuck in and I loved the detail in the figures.

I’ve never seen a Playmobil Advent calendar before and to be honest, I didn’t even realise that they made them but as soon as we saw ours we were BIG fans. We got the Pony Ranch calendar, which is ideal as my eight year old is horse mad. Her eyes lit up the moment she saw it and instead of counting the days until Christmas Day, she’s counting the days until she can open her first box.

This Lakeland Limited Magnetic Advent Calendar is a lovely and unique take on the traditional-style Advent calendar. It is a really colourful item and came packaged in it’s own colourful cardboard sleeve. Being a fan of the Christmas story I couldn’t wait to retell it again with the use of the calendar and it’s 24 magnetic pieces, including baby Jesus, Joseph, Mary, the three Kings and the shepherds and animals. A little more expensive than a regular calendar, but on the upside, it can be used again and again!

The Lakeland Limited Santa Stocking is really well made and would make a thoughtful gift for someone who likes quality and enjoys Christmas! Maybe a nice present to take to Grandma’s house, for when your kids go round there during December!

The Playmobil Dragon’s Land Advent Calendar is fantastic! Every day holds a new toy that builds up a Dragon’s Land scene. Little S hasn’t really had Playmobil before, and he absolutely loved it. He sets it all up, puts it back in the box, tries out different arrangements; for him the possibilities are endless. All the pieces are well made and detailed. Some days you get more than one piece which was really exciting for Little S. He really liked the little skeleton and the working crossbow.

I’m a big fan of Aspace so I was chuffed to bits when I received their Nativity Advent Calendar to review. It’s soft with bright colours and very tactile. I LOVE that the cast of characters are also finger puppets.

The calendars are made from felt by a small cooperative in Nepa, which was established as a social enterprise in 2003. The project’s aim to to help poor, vulnerable and socially excluded women by building their skills and providing the opportunity to enhance their economic status and independence. The workers are provided with fair wages and work in a friendly, healthy, clean and safe environment. The small co-operative has provided economic opportunities to 78 women and aims to develop and support further socially marginalised women in the future.

It comes in a fairly hefty box and Mia’s eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw the picture on the front of the box which shows what the calendar contains. It’s vibrant, fun and has big ‘wow’ factor. You have to ‘build’ it to begin with, which threw us a little. You create the calendar’s inner chambers and then fill them with Playmobil characters, set props, flowers etc as shown in the instructions. Very pink and very girlie.

This hand-made, felt advent calendar looks beautiful and is a far cry from the cardboard chocolate advent calendars that abound at this time of year. It’s made by hand from red and green felt, and is 50cm by 40cm, so small enough not to take over your lounge. In fact, we thought it loked like the sort of thing you’d pick up at a Christmas craft fair. The calendar itself is a cheery, green Christmas tree with 24 pockets underneath. There is also a separate bag with 24 tiny teddy bears, that you put into the pockets. Each day, you remove one teddy bear, and hang it on the tree.

What a clever idea! The “advent calendar” is a wooden box with 24 hinged doors that when opened reveal an individual piece of a traditional Bethlehem nativity scene so your family can build the scene slowly throughout the holiday season. I was very pleased at the idea of getting a traditional advent calendar – High School Musical and Hannah Montana advent calendars just do not seem right!

This is a cute, modern advent calendar that’s great for smaller rooms and spaces, but probably not something you’ll bring out year after year.
Buy online at M&S
Price £15
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Initial Thoughts: This is …

For starters, the box of the Lakeland Limited Advent Train weighed a lot more than I expected, so back injury aside, I was pleased with how substantial it is. It’s a traditionally-styled engine with two carriages, hand-made from brightly painted pine, and it’s got that proper “came from Santa’s workshop” look to it. Flea was absolutely thrilled with it and immediately set about opening the 24 little ‘cargo’ drawers (there are 12 on each side of the train).

The Advent calendar we got to try is the Playmobil Pirate Island. It comes flat packed in a box and requires that you set it all up yourself. Once you have put together there are 24 compartments and you can place the toys in each one of them. When it is all assembled, children will be able to open a window a day to discover a new toy.

I usually love everything from JoJo Maman Bebe, so I was looking forward to receiving their hand embroidered linen advent calendar. I’m sorry to say I was disappointed and completely underwhelmed. This is a white fabric square with 24 numbered pockets, each big enough to hold a couple of sweets or a very small toy. It’s almost plain apart from the embroidered “Merry Christmas” at the bottom. We hung it up and made sad faces at each other.

When I pulled the Cancer Research UK Advent Calendar out of the box I thought that it looked quite pretty and nicely festive. There is a red triangular tree-shaped outer with a multi-coloured tree-shaped interior made up of boxes. Each box has a small drawer decorated with a seasonal shape and a accent coloured ribbon. It’s nice to have a calendar that looks attractive as well as offering the children a count-down to Christmas. Cancer Research says this is not suitable as a toy, though, so you do need to keep it out of the reach of little fingers, and supervise younger children carefully when they’re using it.

This advent calendar is in the shape of a house with 24 little doors, and has a musical snowflake which you need to wind up. It looks well made and is very colourful. The children couldn’t wait to have a good look at it and open and shut the little doors.