Tasha Tudor Advent Calendars!

Diane and Sarah Are Inspired!

Amelia loves beeswax candles and especially enjoys meals and tea by candlelight. Lucy helps her Auntie Amelia dip beeswax candles. The smell of beeswax is so lovely when you step inside Corgyncombe Cottage.

Diane and Sarah love beeswax candles and candlelight, too. What fond remembrances we have of evening meals in the parlour at Tasha Tudor's Corgi Cottage. Tasha Tudor would light many candles and wind up her old music box. How delightful it was to sit in the candlelight whilst the music box played.

Tasha Tudor's Advent Calendars and delightful dolls inspired Diane and Sarah to create their own Christmas Calendar.

Diane and Sarah's 4th Annual Calendar to Count "The Days Until Christmas: Amelia's Favorite Things" can be found by clicking here:

"The Days Until Christmas: Amelia's Favorite Things"

The link takes you to our web site "Our Favorite Things" where there is a special page with our Calendar with 25 round red windows covered with holly until the appointed day. Sometime during each day the window will change to the photograph of the day. The windows of the day are done alphabetically, going from A to Z and feature the dolls and their animals friends at Corgyncombe as they celebrate Christmastide joy!

The Tasha Tudor Advent Calendar in the photograph above was a serendipitous find this last summer. It was put aside and we waited to open the doors on the proper appointed days. In the photograph above, "An Advent Calendar from Tasha Tudor" is displayed. In front are some of the critters that live at Corgyncombe, Tillie Tinkham the mouse, an owl, rabbit, and fox.

"An Advent Calendar from Tasha Tudor", features a delightful outdoor scene of woodland creatures set against the snow, trees and sky of the forest. Underneath there are several burrows. In the center of a large tree, the biggest double door, to be opened on the 24th, leads down to the Rabbit's Afternoon Tea Room. A rabbit couple arrive wearing snowshoes, the patrons of the tea room leave their snowshoes on the side of the tree entrance. Near the entrance, a beautiful snow covered evergreen tree with a star up top, is covered with enchanting sparkles! Chickadees can be seen flying in with more sparkles to be put on the tree. The Corgyncombe Courant just loves sparkly snow, both in daylight and by the light of the moon!

There are owls, chickadees, squirrels, mice, rabbits, foxes, bluejays, crows,and flying squirrels. St. Nicholas is in the sky with six owls pulling his sleigh and a rabbit is kindly feeding apples to a deer. A little owl is high up in a tree near a December full moon.

In the bottom center burrow, with stairs leading down from the entrance, the rabbits have a delightfully detailed tea room. In another burrow the trash collector raccoons are having a high old time. A poor rooster is captive in a cage, perhaps to provide their next meal. There is a rabbit family in their own burrow, a mama rabbit holding two bunnies, with two more bunnies in a cradle, while father rabbit has fallen asleep in bed reading. Hibernating animals in another burrow are disturbed by the loud, festive mice, who are dancing and playing music. There is a cozy burrow with stockings hung by the fireplace, a Christmas tree, and three youngins tucked in under a lovely warm quilt. It seems that you can look at Tasha Tudor's Advent Calendars and always find something delightfully new!

The little owl in the tree by the light of the full moon, was part of Diane and Sarah's Christmas Calendar last year, "The Days Until Christmas: Amelia's Favorite Things". The above photograph was taken last year before Diane and Sarah had seen and studied "An Advent Calendar from Tasha Tudor", that they found this past summer. This little owl above in the Corgyncombe apple tree by the light of the Corgyncombe full December moon bears a striking resemblance to the little owl and full moon in "An Advent Calendar from Tasha Tudor".

This year, the moon reached its fullest in the wee hours of the morn on December 2nd.
Above is a Corgyncombe December full moon.

 In the photograph above, Corgyncombe critters Chirpy Cheerful, Quackenbush the duck, and Tillie Tinkham the mouse, look at the fun happenings at Corgiville in "Tasha Tudor's Advent Calendar, A Wreath of Days".

In "Tasha Tudor's Advent Calendar, A Wreath of Days" Tasha Tudor writes: "Greens are brought in to make the wreath and garlands. The house is filled with the cold, fresh scents of spruce and hemlock, tracked in snow, drying mittens, woodsmoke and baking, all that exemplifies happiness and home. Were one to smell any of these things again in a far country, many years hence, the entire scene would come poignantly alive once more and clutch the heart."

The Corgyncombe Courant loves the cover of "Tasha Tudor's Advent Calendar, A Wreath of Days". The tri colored corgi with the horn in the green jacket is so beguiling. The mummy Bunny and her little Bunns are so sweet, as is the Corgi mum with her little corgyn checking out the stocking. Inside the front cover, a corgi family is hanging the Advent wreath.

The Advent Calendar itself, in the center of the book, is an illustration of Corgiville with corgyn, bunnies, cats, and Boggarts (Swedish trolls) frolicking about in the winter scene. There are several sleighs being pulled by goats and a sleigh being pulled by a pig. Beyond the village of Corgiville, one can see the landscape with the farms and the mountains in the distance. A church is in the center of town with double doors to be opened on December 24th. On the last page of the book, a rabbit family are gathered in front of the old wood cookstove, papa sleeping in his rocker, little bunnies making things, and Mama Bunn looking attentively at one of the little Bunn's paintings. A little wren is perched on the back of Mama Bunn's rocking chair. On the inside back cover, there are squirrels performing as if they are in a circus, and a Christmas outdoor fair. Such splendid detail and imagination! The Corgyncombe Courant will not tell you what is under the numbered doors, that should remain a surprise for you to discover. The Corgyncombe Courant knows that you too would love this book! As Tasha Tudor says at the end of the book: "There are few events so satisfying as the pleasurable anticipation of the coming Christmas in the silence of cold and snow without, and the warmth and happiness within."

Lucy dipping beeswax candles in Amelia's cozy kitchen.

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