I love celebrating Advent. This year I wanted to try and keep it simple as it’s such a busy time of year, especially with two children at school. I’ve made the children their own advent calendars which hopefully I’ll be able to re-use year after year. Although I usually treat myself to an advent calendar this year I wanted something a little different.

I find most advent calendars really wasteful, full of things I don’t really need (yes M&S Advent calendar, I’m talking about you!). I’m usually out of the door at half past 7 so I have little time to open anything, instead I opted to make myself something which I could take my time over each day and enjoy – a mindful advent candle kit. I have to admit that this isn’t my own idea, I saw something similar in a pop up shop and knew I wanted to make my own version.

Making a Mindful advent candle kit

Do you practice mindfulness? I get overwhelmed easily and find practicing mindfulness helps me a lot. Put simply, it’s the ability to be fully present in the moment, and it’s something I do regularly here on my blog to keep me grounded.

The idea behind the Mindful advent candle kit was to light a candle every day during Advent, giving me the chance to focus on the moment, and hopefully not worry so much about Christmas presents, homework, after school clubs and what’s for dinner.

You don’t need much to make your own Mindful advent candle kit. I found a glass jar with lid in my store cupboard and bought a box of 24 white candles. I’ve been enjoying using my Cricut Maker recently so cut numbers out of black vinyl for each candle.

As the candles were so small this was a little fiddly to do but totally worth it. I tried to position them all in the same place.

When I had numbered each candle I placed them inside the glass jar. The final thing I added was a little metal candle holder so the glass jar turned into not just a place to store the candles, but also somewhere to light the candle. I used my Ryobi hot glue gun to attach the candle holder to the lid of the jar.

I love my Mindful advent candle countdown. Both the children have been learning about mindfulness at school so I’m hoping this will be a new family tradition and give us all some much needed time to focus during advent.