Let The Countdown Begin

G and I had a child free day out in Chichester on Saturday as both T and S were staying over with friends . G is always looking to add to his vinyl collection and had been recommended a couple of record shops to try which came up trumps for him.

There was one shop which I wanted to go in, good old CK of course. And something was purchased there too, but it has been spirited away and I'll get to see it again Christmas day.

Keeping me going until then is a stack of 24 presents from my sister T, one to open each day in the advent countdown.
One evening at my sisters way back in January we each put our names into a pot. My sister T drew out my name, I drew out C's and C therefore had T's. We decided we would buy 18 small gifts and 6 others which could be food or drink based.
We also bought a further 8 gifts each for mum so she would have a set of advent gifts too, but we didn't tell her about it. 
We all went to see mum yesterday afternoon and surprised her with her basket of goodies and swapped our gifts too which we had put into pillowcases. We chose pillowcases as when we were little this is what we used to put at the end of our bed on Christmas eve.

This is what C opened this morning. I just love how cute he looks! My first present was a mini chocolate Father Christmas.

These are three of my favourite things from the rest of her haul which she'll be opening over the next couple of weeks.

Last year S and I kept busy from 1st December until Christmas with our advent countdown. I've prepared another for this year and today was 'put up the tree'. It wasn't going to be but S was sick during the night and so didn't go to school today. Decorating the tree this afternoon was just the ticket for cheering up a poorly girl. Thankfully she is fine again now so fingers crossed it's back to school tomorrow.