"For every disciplined effort there is a multiple reward."

Its been a fun build up to Christmas this year mainly because we have decided not to go mad, buying things for the sake of it. When writing their letters to Santa this year, like every other year, we told the boys to just write 3 things that they wanted. You would think that this would be easy for any 6 and 11-year-old, the only difficult part being narrowing the list down to 3. For Seth and Opeie though it was a bit of a struggle. 

For a long time now I have been the sort of person that gets to Christmas and genuinely doesn't want anything. I am so content with how my life is that there is nothing that could make me any happier. All I ever want is a happy Mrs M and the boys. This has unexpectedly rubbed off on the boys, Seth especially. Opeie had one thing on his Christmas list that he really wanted and Seth simply said "I feel like i have everything that I need" which I thought was a very grown up and humble thing to say.

I like to think of Christmas as a time for making effort rather than it revolving around heavy spending. I like to try and do something special for the boys around the festive period that doesn't cost anything and this year I decided that I was going to make them both an advent calender. I had made them an advent in the past with the help of Mrs M, this year though I wanted to build them something using those lovable bricks.

At first I was kicking myself that I hadn't kept the LEGO advent calender we had bought last year as they would be great for reusing, all I would have had to do was design a cover for the box and I'd have been sorted. We ended up using the tray from our previous one as paint pots when crafting. Good old LEGO and their recyclable packaging. This years LEGO calender became my advent and mind started ticking away with ideas for the boys, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

Opeie has become a HUGE Ninjago fan since the LEGO Ninjago movie was released so it was a no brainer that his advent was going to be Ninjago themed. I decided to build his advent in the style of a Japanese temple with 25 doors to open. For each day a Ninjago character for his collection. Any LEGO enthusiast reading this with probably think 'that would cost a small fortune' but being a member of so many Facebook LEGO trade pages I managed to trade all of the figures for other LEGO items that we have. The advent didn't actually take that long to build and the look on his face on the 1st was amazing. Now on day 18 I get an excited little boy waking me up to tell me who he has got, its awesome.

I struggled at first for Seth's advent as he's not into any themes that come with minifigures. For Seth LEGO has become all about Technics. He loves playing with cogs and motors and working out how to make machines witch from an educational point of view is amazing. I decided to cruise the Facebook pages again and contact friends online looking for interesting Technics elements that he doesn't have in his collection. The problem I had though, was that I didn't know what style to build the advent (and I'm definitely out of my building comfort zone with Technics). That being said though I sat one evening and worked out how to make a remote control box which worked great but it looked boring so instead I decided to build a snowman with motor and receiver on the back so that Seth could open his torso every morning via remote and get to his LEGO Technic surprise.

Its been such a lovely feeling every morning watching them get excited about whats coming next and for me this is what Christmas is all about. A little effort goes a long way.

"Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling."

While most families are reaching the peak of their Christmas excitement this evening, in anticipation of the visit from that jolly red chap. For us at the Gifts from the pirates HQ it is just another night, as every other year Santa makes a special delivery to us on boxing eve as Seth isn't with us. Although December 25th doesn't feel the same without him here, we can't avoid the festive cheer as we have had an amazing month in preparation for the big day.

Making the house look Christmassy is such a huge thing in our house, last year thanks to the boys grandparents we ended up with a second Christmas tree and this year the boys were desperate for one in their room so two became three. Me and Opeie spent some time making paper chains from extra copies of The Grinch we had to make their room feel even more festive.

We had had a LEGO Santa and Reindeer (wearing a dickie bow and polka dot jumper) that we had built, adding a splash of colour to our kitchen window since late November but Mrs M and the boys were desperate to get some lights up. They did make a huge difference to everyone's festive cheer, which was awesome.

Last weekend in preparation of the special day we all went out for a walk (in the cold wet weather) in search of holly, ivy and other greenery to make our annual wreath for the door although the night we were all going to make it the boys were off playing with their friend so Mrs M made the lovely wreath herself.

This morning we were all feeling really festive and tonight technically not being our Christmas eve, the opening of the final doors on the boys LEGO calendars meant that we couldn't get away from the fact that it was the day before Christmas day.

So today we fully embraced the fun filled family day and spent the afternoon together making (Opeie friendly) gluten free gingerbread cookies...

And a pretty awesome gingerbread house if I do say so myself.

The weather hadn't really been great so me and the boys did our usually Christmas LEGO building session and came up with a festive looking mini Star Wars AT-AT and Tie Fighter.

Although we wont be celebrating the big day officially tomorrow it will be nice to have that extra day for preparation. A HUGE Merry Christmas, however you are spending your holidays this year. We hope you and your families have an amazing time together.