My Love/Hate Relationship with December & Giveaway Day 4

Here's what I don't love about December - it's annual review time at work. Which I managed to somehow totally forget about (was probably trying to block it out of my mind) and only realised today that it was due in on Monday. So bang goes my weekend. I'll be throwing paper around and effing and jeffing at the computer and trying to think of ways to make myself sound awesome.

I'm also not overly keen on being so busy in general that I have no time to read. I think I'm busy with one thing and another practically every day from now until Christmas. Ok, some of it is nice, fun stuff but I do miss just loafing about. And I get really tetchy when deprived of books.

Here's what I do love about December - advent calendars!!!

Due to the pesky milk allergy I can't have chocolate, so normal advent calendars are out. For my entire childhood I had a superb one which was basically a cardboard chimney with boxes stacked inside it that some lovely person (my grandma) filled up with sweeties and hair bobbles and mini Christmas tree ornaments. Sadly there was an unfortunate too-close-to-the-radiator/melty boiled sweets incident which meant it had to go in the bin a few years ago. As I'm still a giant child I couldn't possibly not have one, so I've moved onto this big felt scroll thing which my wonderful mum fills up for me (mini snowman shaped earrings today in case you're interested!). It makes getting up on cold December mornings much more fun.

I also thoroughly approve of all the websites that do online advent calendars because they're basically just brilliant competitions. I always have pants luck and never win anything but I thought I'd share some of my favourites with you in the hopes that you have better luck than I do. Just click on the links, enter and fingers crossed!

Next is topping my list so far due to some seriously nice prizes on offer - anyone fancy a swanky new digital camera? I'm hoping they put some of their clothes on offer as a prize soon as I'm muchly impressed with their some of their new season stuff.

Dorset Cereals always has loads of great competitions and their advent calendar is very sparkly. Have a twirl at Spin The Bottle while you're there. I still haven't won anything from them but I'm not giving up trying.

Try Random House for lovely book related goodies.

Have a look at the Glamour magazine one as well. I don't find their website the easiest in the world to navigate but the prizes seem v. fashion based and fun.

Classic FM's advent calendar is a bit more grown up but still nice prizes.

Jamie Cullum has one on his website. As you might expect, lots of the prizes are music based but they're top notch.

And for any fellow Scousers or North West based girls, the Echo Arena has one running and there are tons of nice Liverpool based prizes on offer.

Finally, there are no prizes with this one but the National Museums Liverpool calendar is full of interesting snippets about items from the museums. Just my sort of thing.

How's about my very own giveaway?

Oh the fourth day of my giveaway, I will give to thee:


Some calling birds earrings - told you it got a bit bird based at the start!. Pretty, yes? Birds AND communication all in the one design, hurrah. No tenous links just yet (wait till I get to leaping lords and milkmaids...)