The only Welsh language advent calendar I've ever seen was the kind with nothing but little pictures behind the windows. Cute, but not really destined to endear me to a chocolate obsessed four year old! And, I mean, sure I could make one myself from scratch but that requires the kind of organisation and forward planning that eludes me at the best of times, let alone in the run up to the Christmas.

I was psyched, then, to come across the perfect compromise: chocolate advent calendars with personalised messages.



The process was super easy. All you need to do is write a note to tell the recipient who it's from - in this case, llawer o gariad oddi wrth Siôn Corn (lots of love from Father Christmas) - then fill in the message you want spelled out in chocolate. The toughest part was coming up with something that exactly matched the number of available characters. Eventually I went with:

❤NADOLIG★LLAWEN★IAWN★MARIANNA❤

(Very Merry Christmas Marianna)



You get 30 characters as some days have double chocolate allocations. They are the 5th (character #5 + #6), the 6th (#7 + #8), the 15th (#17 + #18), the 19th (#22 + #23), the 21st (#25 + #26) and the 23rd (#28 + #29) in case you want to use any of them for Welsh's double letters - eg. the 'LL' in Llawen.

(As an aside, I went through my entire school career without working out how to consistently make that sound. It wasn't until my mid-20s that I came across the advice to press the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and hiss. It really works!)



There are three different shipping options so I went for the mid-range 48 hour tracked. Our calendar arrived on Thursday, beautifully wrapped and ready for action. I love that it's kind of narrow, shaped to fit easily through a letterbox, and naturally we had to conduct a little taste test. For science. Thus I can confirm that the top notch Belgian chocolate definitely hits the spot.

Want to try it for yourself? The Morse Toad Secret Message Advent Calendar is available now for £12.95. Or, use the code CHOCPOST15BL to get 15% off, bringing the price down to £11.01. (Yeah, I totally just googled that...)

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Make sure to sign up to their Smile rewards scheme before you order too; you can earn 'gold toads' for purchases, following on social media, etc, which can be exchanged for free extras or discount coupons. :)