Wax Melt Advent Calendars Review

If you know me, you'll know that I've really enjoyed the expansion in advent calendars that we've seen over the past few years. For the last few Christmasses, I've bought a Yankee Candle advent calendar. I've had the smaller ones before where you get tealights, although last year I got the mid price one which had a mixture of tea lights and votives. You can see my blogs about these here. 

Last Christmas I got a wax melt burner as a gift, which I'd asked for because I wanted to try some melts. I had them as a teen but hadn't had any in twenty years. All year I've been using melts I bought, some from Wax Addict and some from Scentful Wax, who make lovely melts that have a great scent and which I would highly recommend. I say 'some' from Scentful Wax, I've spent an absolute fortune on melts throughout this year. However! I use melts every day and love them, so I don't feel too bad about it. 

So as it came up to Christmas, I was thinking about a wax melt advent calendar. I saw an advert on Instagram for a calendar from a company I wasn't familiar with, so I took a chance and ordered it. The company is called Foxglove Fragrances and the calendar is quite big. Inside each door is a mini wax slab, made of three squares of wax. I would normally use two but three has been fine too. These scents have been all vaguely 'winter' themed, but not always specifically Christmas themed. They've all been really nice; I have really liked some and would order again. There's a bigger door behind #24, which I assume is a whole mini slab, so that will be nice. 

In the middle of November a present arrived from my mum - a wax melt advent calendar from a company called Wax Ever! Thanks Mum! I hadn't heard of this company either but they were local to me, based in Rotherham. This is a smaller calendar, and each melt is shaped like a present and is maybe an inch by an inch. There's been a variety of scents here, including some that smell like famous perfumes, some that have been unsual, like velvet peony and oud, and some Christmassy ones. I've really enjoyed this range of melts and will definitely order again. 

I've burned each melt at least once, on the day I opened it. I've had one in the morning and one in the evening, mostly. However, I've by no means used all the melt up in just one burning, so I've popped them out of my wax burners (I've got three now) and back into the bigger calendar where the doors are by far big enough to keep both melts. This means I've still got loads of wax left to use for January - I should imagine I can get at least one more burn out of all of them. 

I don't know how much my mum paid for the smaller calendar, but the bigger one was £35 which included delivery, which I felt was fair, and was the same price as the Yankee Candle one I bought last year. I'm preferring melts at the moment - I think the scent throw is better - so I would order this again. I would order bigger slabs from both companies as the scents are really good! 

Wax Ever on the left and Foxglove Fragrances on the right

The left is the Foxglove Fragrances tiny slabs - three squares is plenty

And the right is the cute present shaped melts from Wax Ever

My 2019 Advent Calendar

You may remember last year when I blogged about the advent calendars I had had in December, well I thought I would do the same this year. I had a Lindt calendar and Lee had a tall Cadbury one that had bigger stuff in it like a packet of buttons and a whole Freddo! He and my mum also filled the little box advent calendar that my aunt had given me in 2018. It had loads of fun things in like buttons, sweets, seeds. It was really fun!

Anyway, I also bought myself one of the Yankee Candle advent calendars. I've had one for several years now. In 2019 they sold three different types. One is £25 and has 24 tealight candles plus a tealight holder. This is the one I've had before and I think it's good value. The tealights last for about 5 hours each and have a good scent throw.

The most expensive one retails at £79.99 and in that you get two small jar candles, lots of votices, a box of tealights, and other accessories. I would probably love this but I couldn't justify the expense at all. It's on sale as I write this but it's still at £56! However, it is probably lovely!

Then there's a calendar that is £35 and that comes with eight votive candles all in different scents, sixteen tealights in eight different scents, and a votive holder. I decided I would go for this one this year, to see if the extra ten pounds was worth it. The calendar is in a really nice book shape with leaves that fold out.

The votives were nicely spread out through the 24 days, although I mostly burned the tealights and have saved the votives. There's some really nice scents that I haven't smelt before - I really liked Cinnamon Stick and Frosty Gingerbread, as well as Icy Blue Spruce and Evergreen Mist. There's some old favourites too, like The Perfect Tree, which is a Yankee classic.

In all I felt that it was worth spending the extra money to get this calendar over the one with just tealights. Eight votives will last a long time and I liked having such a range of scents, too (in the tealights one you get just 8 different scents of 3 tealights each). I will probably buy the mid price one next year too as I really enjoy having this as an advent calendar and getting a new candle every day!

This is what the calendar looks like closed

And this is it open. The votive holder has no day on it, so you could open it at the beginning of the month to use all month. I have lots of holders though, so didn't open it until later

I was not in any way compensated for this post. I bought the calendar with my own money and am just writing this post because I want to share my experience!

My 2018 Advent Calendars

Hello! Happy new year! I'm writing this in December but by the time you read it, it'll be 2019! Isn't that weird? That's so far into the future I barely know what to do about it. Wasn't it 2002 just yesterday?

Anyway, here's the advent calendars I had in December. I kept it quite lowkey for me - I love advent and last year I had a book advent calendar which I really enjoyed. I've had Yankee Candle advent calendars for a few years and I love them - the tealights burn for around 6 hours each and I love the scent throw they have, so I've always found them really good value.

This year I had seen the Yankee calendars, but they stayed pricey and I couldn't justify one, especially as I'd recently bought some lots of their candles off Groupon for bargain prices, so I decided to not buy one. Then I saw a Staylite calendar advertised for £5, so I bought one for me and one for my mum.

The candles don't have as much of a scent throw as Yankee ones, so I've taken to burning two at once - sometimes the same scent but sometimes complimentary ones. This is fine because I missed a few days. I gave my mum the calendar when she'd had a really rubbish week and it really cheered her up which I'm glad about. For £5 you can't complain, I would buy this again next year.

I'd seen the Lindt advent calendars online somewhere. I love Lindt chocolate, so I thought Lee and I would go to the Lindt shop in York's designer outlet when we were there at the end of November. However, when we went, the queue was ridiculous just to get to the car park! So we decided to just come home instead, and Lee said he'd order one for me. There were quite a few to choose from, but I chose this one because it had most of the sweets I like. I enjoyed this advent calendar a lot. 

I bought Lee a Quality Street one for a fiver, which he liked. 

A finally I got this advent calendar as a surprise from my aunt! She bought the boxes plain (from Hobbycraft I believe) and decoupaged them. They're really tiny so she had to be really creative for what went in them, and as you can see she bought me some things that wouldn't fit inside. She had asked Lee and a friend for some ideas, and I am thoroughly enjoying opening each little door and seeing what's inside. I've had stamps, hair clips, a candle, an amethyst crystal... so many lovely little things! 

I've told Lee that he needs to fill this for me next year!