ADVENT CALENDAR - $10 OFF

It's your lucky day! $10 off any Sea Dean painting over $70. Just choose from available paintings at Daily Paintworks and contact me by clicking on the email button. I will invoice via PayPal.

For my celebration this year I'm offering an advent gift each day till December 25th. The offer is available to all my Blog followers and patrons for 24 hours and ends at the stroke of midnight PST. A small thank you for your friendship and support.

Paintings can be viewed by clicking on the Daily Paintworks slideshow at the top of my blog. While there also check out my $29 auctions starting each day. Choose as many as you wish, contact me with your list and I will invoice you. After payment I would be happy to ship gifts to the recipients.

WIN A PRINT 
EACH TIME YOU SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA RECEIVE AN ENTRY INTO THE DRAW. eg. Share on 5 media for 10 days and you get FIFTY entries. So follow my blog and share on Facebook, Twitter, or any social media, let me know where in my blog comments and I will enter you to win the large 17" x 11" "On the vine" print as shown.

I always loved advent calendars when I was a kid. There was no chocolate treat in the ones we had. I think they were a German custom because I don't remember seeing them in England when I was growing up and I think ours came from there. We used the same calendar year after year and there was great excitement as we opened each door to see the picture behind it (we had forgotten what was there by then). As we grew we became preoccupied with school and friends and often forgot, so there were several to open at once.

The best day December 24th when a big double door revealed the baby Jesus and the nativity scene. The family then assembled to decorate the tree. The kids had hot cider, teenagers drank babycham and cherry B, while the adults sipped hi-test egg-flip (alcoholic egg nog). Great memories!

After emigrating and family members moved away, I continued the tradition with my father, partner and kitty. We went out to forage a tree from an abandoned tree lot (I can't stand the idea of those beautiful trees giving up their lives to be unceremoniously tossed into a landfill without a hint of glitter). Sometimes we tied two or three sad trees together to get enough greenery and cold and hungry, proudly brought it home to be covered in twinkly lights. That mulled wine sure tasted good after several hours tree hunting.