Santa Sleigh Christmas Advent Calendar

It was almost a decade ago that I started what would become an annual tradition in our household!

I bought a wooden Santa Sleigh Advent Calendar for my daughter, (then 5 years old), and every Christmas I would buy a Lego set to stock it with. (Originally starting with a 300 piece set, we have eventually progressed up to an 800 piece set.) The set would then be divided into 24 bags, each with one instruction step. For the larger sets, it could be quite challenging to condense an instruction book into 24 steps, so some bags would have 2 steps. If it was possible to mix up the order in which these steps were built, I would also do this. My daughter was not told which set I had bought, so it kept her guessing sometimes to the last day!

The 24 bags would never fit into the wooden advent calendar drawers, so each night I would think of a riddle or brainteaser to put in the drawer. When she solved the riddle, she would have a clue as to where I had hidden the bag with the instructions. She still has all the sets on display in her room, and she has kept all the riddles over the years! (She assures me that she still wants this tradition to continue, possibly even after she moves out one day!)

After all these years, I'm finding it much harder to think up new riddles, so I decided it was time to have an advent calendar with drawers that are big enough to hold the bags of Lego - hence, I decided to build a calendar out of Lego. (It is based on the wooden one we have used all these years.)

I started by working out how big I wanted the drawers to be, (internally approximately 3.5cm in width, 5.5cm in length and 5cm in height), and the rest of the model was built around that. The sleigh itself measures approximately 70cm in length, 22cm in width, and 41cm in height. The sleigh has 24 numbered drawers, which slide in and out, and can also be removed and put in any order you desire. (I guess if you just wanted to use it as a Christmas ornament, it could be built without the drawers as an alternate build option - something to consider). The set has 2998 pieces.

I believe this set would appeal to adults as the initial build, and obviously to children year after year! To us this Santa Sleigh Advent Calendar is just as important as a Christmas tree, if not more so! It is an investment that will provide hours of enjoyment every Christmas!  It's something that can be passed down from generation to generation! Build it each year when you put up the Christmas tree, or store it assembled ready for next year.