The Laboratory

You'll pleased to hear Sarah enjoyed the first chocolate figure out of her Carluccio's Advent Calendar. It was a small mushroom, made by Caffarel, a Piemontese chocolate manufacturer. Too much information? Today's picture is of the mascots for the 2016 Olympics. Rio has done some great branding and promotion, and they want all of us to choose the names for their Olympic and Paralympic mascots. Visit their website where you can take a selfie with them, find out more about what the Olympics stand for, and get exciting about the next Olympic Games! Of course our favourite mascots ever are still  Miga, Quatchi, Sumi and Mukmuk from Vancouver 2010!

Happy Christmas from Sarah and Adam! No, don't be silly, that's not us, that's Kristin and Haakon, the mascots from the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics in Norway. We're really looking forward to the Olympics next year, as you can probably tell, and hope you are too. Until then, we wish all of our readers a very happy Christmas and New Year, and hope you get presents/snow/chocolate/peace (delete as appropriate)! PS don't forget to enter the competition on 21st December - we have lots of prizes to be won!

Make the most of it, Wenlock and Mandeville are only going to appear once on this Advent Calendar, unless you can come up with some even worse memorabilia than this. As the weirdest and ugliest Olympic mascots you have ever seen, and also the most commercially exploited, there's no place for them in the panoply of much-loved mascots of yesteryear. These two tree decorations are £25 each. If you're feeling that rich, why not give £50 to Shelter or Crisis ? Or you can buy the decorations  here .

Make the most of it, Wenlock and Mandeville are only going to appear once on this Advent Calendar, unless you can come up with some even worse memorabilia than this. As the weirdest and ugliest Olympic mascots you have ever seen, and also the most commercially exploited, there's no place for them in the panoply of much-loved mascots of yesteryear. These two tree decorations are £25 each. If you're feeling that rich, why not give £50 to Shelter or Crisis ? Or you can buy the decorations  here .