Win a Maileg Pixie in The Great Toy Guide's Guide to the Best Reuasable Advent Calendars 2010

As you might be aware I am Deputy Editor of The Great Toy Guide, which is a fantastic site where we take toys and give them to our own children. Our children are really lovely, but they DO like to do things like dunk toys in orange juice. They send action figures on missions that involve being thrown down the stairs. They pull, prod and shake things just to see what happens. And when they’re done, they leave their toys on the floor for passing adults to stand on.

I know we’re barely past Halloween, but at the Great Toy Guide, the team have been hard at work testing out the best alternatives to chocolate advent calendars. We’ve brought together some of our favourite cardboard, fabric and wooden advent calendars.

This year we are also offering one of our readers the chance to win a magnificant Maileg Christmas Pixie advent calendar. Designed in Denmark, this festive pixie stands at more than 1.5 metres tall and will make a fantastic addition to your Christmas decorations. To be in with a chance of winning, simply leave a comment on this post at The Great Toy Guide telling us your favourite Christmas tradition. A winner will be picked at random on November 25th, and the calendar shipped to you in time for December 1st. UK entrants only. Good luck!

A Pause in Advent - Joy

joy / joi/ • n. a feeling of great pleasure and happiness: tears of joy the joy of being alive. ∎  a thing that causes joy: the joys of Manhattan. • v. [intr.] poetic/lit. rejoice: I felt shame that I had ever joyed in his discomfiture or pain.  2009 has brought me lots of joy, I have shed the above tears and I have a family that brings me joy every day.

 In the bible joy is more than an emotion it combines a sence of happiness with a state of blessedness.

 

For me this advent has been a time of biblical joy.  I have found the time to find happiness in the everyday, in the small things and rather than just in the build up to the 25th December.

 

In fact MadDad and I commented that we have enjoyed advent for its own this year, we have taken the time to sit and rejoyed in our lifes and teach our children imporatant aspects of the advent story and they both see christmas day as the day we celebrate Jesus' birth.  

 

Yes for them presents also play a role in their joy, but the giving in so much as the receiving.  They have learned the joy in giving their freinds cookies instead of cards, giving small personalised Christmas Stockings to their best friends.

 

By giving each day a task we have lived in the present day and took time to enjoy each one rather than just spending the time waiting for the 25th to arrive.

 

This is the best lesson that I have learnt this advent to enjoy each day for its own merits, to live for the now and what you have rather than what you might be getting.

 

For this and my family I truly rejoice.

 

Thank you Floss for allowing me this platform and this excuse to sit down and contemplate the meaning of advent and of this very special time of year.  

 

Merry Christmas One and All