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Things I Love – #19
I love Advent Calendars. I’m not talking the cheap, waxy chocolate kind for children. I’m talking calendars with an adorable daily gift for the special grown ups in your life. Unfortunately, some of the calendars below have already sold out for this year, but keep them in mind for next year. (Click on the photos below and any blue words for more information.)
Olive and June Mani Magic Olive & June – This is a new nail polish line that I discovered this summer (and love!) so I was thrilled to see they had an advent calendar. I bought this during the pre-sale and it sold out very quickly. The Olive and June website has many other gift options like a Merry Mani ornament with a polish and topcoat. OPI and Essie also make advent calendars.
Sugarfina Sugarfina – If you know someone who likes candy, but not necessarily chocolate, this calendar has a nice assortment of Sugarfina candies and only a few chocolates. PaperSource also sells Sugarfina so check both to see who has the best price.
L’Occitane Signature Calendar L’Occitane – This is a great way to try L’Occitane products and considering the items included, it’s really a good deal. L’Occitane offers both a Signature calendar and a Premium calendar. (The Premium calendar is already sold out, so I only listed the Signature calendar above.)
Godiva 
Charbonnel et Walker If you like chocolate, try a high end chocolate advent calendar, like Godiva or Charbonnel et Walker. Williams Sonoma sells several advent calendar options for every price range and flavor profile.
24 Jolly Days with 24 Whiskeys Have a whiskey lover in family? There’s an advent calendar for that at Flaviar. There are also advent calendars for everything from gin to hard ciders. If you want to build your own alcohol advent calendar, Amazon sells these empty advent boxes and Teeleandco on Etsy has this cute wine Christmas tree advent calendar.
Bonne Maman 
Adagio Gourmet Tea For the breakfast lover consider the Bonne Maman calendar with 24 mini fruit spreads and honey or the Adagio Gourmet Tea calendar.
Toys for Dogs And last, but not least, Chewy has advent calendars for your dog and cat.
If you haven’t bought advent calendars for this year, order soon! Not only do they sell out early, but with Covid there are shipping delays with many companies.
Comment below with your favorite advent calendars so I can add them to my list for next year. Note: It’s perfectly acceptable to buy yourself an advent calendar.
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Traveling with a Pet
When we decided to live in Scottsdale, Arizona for two months this winter we knew we wanted to drive so we would have our own vehicle, we could bring more of our own things and we could bring our Maltese / Shih Tzu, Sadie. Sadie has only traveled with us to visit family so traveling long distance with her was going to be a new experience.We decided that we would take five days to drive the 1,814 miles from Saint Paul, MN to Arizona. As soon as we had our route mapped out, I started searching for pet friendly hotels in each of our stops. I utilized Yelp and TripAdvisor to find the pet friendly hotels and then read reviews to finalize where we would be staying. I found out that most of the pet friendly hotels have specific rooms set aside for guests with pets so we had to book in advance to ensure we had one of those rooms. If you aren’t already aware, there is typically a pet fee of $50 / night.
At our first hotel stop, we brought Sadie’s bed and travel bag with her bowls, food, treats and toys. We unpacked a little and took her for a short walk. Once she had eaten her dinner and seemed settled in the room, we thought we would try a quick trip down to the lobby bar and see how she would handle being alone in a strange hotel room. Well, we didn’t even make it ten feet down the hall before she started frantically scratching on the door. So much for going out to dinner.
From that point on we either ordered room service or we took Sadie with us to pick up dinner to eat in our room. She was just fine being alone in the car, so we were able to go inside restaurants for lunch while we were on the road. Of course, we either parked near a window where we could watch her or one of us periodically went out to check on her.
Traveling with a pet is a little like traveling with children, all of your decisions are made around what works best for them. Luckily, we quickly adopted a routine of going for a nice walk at each stop and then having dinner and cocktails in our room.