Do you have your candles yet?

Because there are only 33 days until the first Sunday in Advent!

Yesterday as I was tearing through the grocery store buying this weeks groceries... (Yes, on a Sunday! As my 20 year old would say; 'My Bad!') it struck me that Advent is just around the corner, and somewhere in amongst all the hoblin goblin costumes and plastic pumpkins that we have been assailed with, for what seems like months, there must be candles.

And I thought to myself, what are the chances that on the eve of the Sunday in Advent (which btw is November 26th) or worse on the day itself (the 27th!) I will be in this same store rummaging through their stock piles of candles seeking that elusive PINK candle I need for Gaudette Sunday! Then having, once more, compromised and bought three purple(ish) candles and one white, I will hit the sewing department and seek, like a mad women searching for her long lost child, a PINK ribbon to tie on my WHITE candle. And all the while I will be wishing that I had been one of those obviously well organized Catholics who had bought her PINK candle in October. Why else are they out of the pink candles in November???

Then I will wander up and down the isles of fake flowers and wreaths, wondering if I should splurge and make a new wreath this year. After looking at the prices, I'll faint, pick myself up off the floor and decide to find the old one we have used for the past seven years, ever since we moved to NC.

Trouble is - this year I have not a hope, nor a prayer of finding this wreath. We moved just before Christmas last year, and I actually had to compromise with FOUR WHITE candles, three purple(ish) ribbons and a pink one. Yes, all bought on the first Sunday of Advent. At the old house, the wreath went into the same closet every New Year so I have NO idea where the wreath went this time.

Is it:
Under the stairs with the spiders and cobwebs?
In the closet I refer to as Mummy's crooked closet due to the door being cut in a bizarre shape? Is it in one of the million boxes in one of the four outbuildings?
Or - is it packed in one of the thirty boxes stacked in the garage?

Well - I have thirty three days to find out before I have to make that mad dash to a local arts and crafts store desperate for candles, ribbons and it looks like possibly a wreath too!

Moral of this story - buy your candles early, and on New Years pay one of your kids to pack the wreath in a safe place, with 50% down and the other 50% promised on the safe return of the wreath the following advent.

BTW if you would like to avoid the mad dash to the local craft store for that elusive pink candle, you can buy your advent candles online ! I JUST might do that myself, but almost certainly I will make my own wreath, as I have always done..