The Laboratory

A Christmas quiz: fast forward to the time shown, play the video for 15 seconds, then pause it and say what happened next! Shakin Stevens "Merry Christmas Everyone" 1) from 2:23 to 2:38 2) from 2:48 to 3:03 Whigfield "Last Christmas" 3) from 1:25 to 1:40 Mariachi Doritos "Stay Another Day" 4) from 1:55 to 2:10 Sir Clifford of Richard "Saviour's Day" 5) from 2:35 to 2:50

Final round-up before jetting off (to Horsham!) This time it's nativities - including Swiss (thanks Gail!), atheist, chocolate (from my Percy Pig calendar), Star Wars, dinosaur, robot and Playmobil. Happy Christmas!

We still have a folder FULL of pictures for the Advent Calendar, so we're going to do a round-up of tree decs today and nativity scenes tomorrow - so lots to LOL at and also tell your friends - just give them the shortcut bit.ly/adcal12 ! The Blue Jays are Toronto's hockey team. Of course, being Canada that means ICE Hockey! Gorgeous cat (photo by Sarah White). Fast food bling! Knitted pudding. This year's MUST-HAVE tree decoration - matching Yeti and Bigfoot figures!

As with previous Saturdays I wanted to do a round-up of other Advent Calendars. Unfortunately I couldn't find any amusing ones. So instead please be upstanding for ... the Advent Colander!  If that wasn't entertaining enough, you have two fun activities to carry you through this long and rainy weekend. First up is a game that promises to "Reveal Your Inner Goddess". Don't ask me any more, I've no idea about anything to do with this: For more family-suitable fun, download this Krispy Kreme fun sheet - there's colouring in and a wordsearch to do!

It's the Christmas Concert season and who better to entertain us than the triumvirate of choral luvvies Russell, Hayley and Aled. Here they are at the BBC Big Sing in the Royal Albert Hall, with "The Twelve Days Of Christmas". Of course the king of Christmas Concerts is friend of the Advent Calendar, Raymond Gubbay. As well as having a preposterous name, he's now responsible for cheesy concerts across the land, including G Live in Guildford. If you're short of seasonal cheer, why not go this afternoon to hear Russell singing in the RAH again. As a bonus, the event is presented by portly fake psychic Russell Grant! When a child is born Santa Mambo Santa Mary’s Boy Child Rudolph the Red - nosed Reindeer Frosty the Snowman Goodtime Christmas Winter Wonderland Santa Claus is coming to town Guest Singers SOPHIE EVANS & JAMES GRAEME Southend Girls’ Choir Southend Boys’ Choir Capital Voices choir London Concert Orchestra Bonus beats:

Guest post from @maxnugget, an extraordinary woman of our acquaintance: The Sarah Lund Tea Cosy If you’re looking for that elusive Scandinavian gift for the office Forbrydelsen fan then you’ve still got time to knit a Sarah Lund tea cosy.  Cheap and cheerful and nothing says Merry Christmas like the gift of acrylic wool.  It takes about 4 hours to knit so you can do it while you’re watching telly. I can’t read knitting patterns, in fact they may as well be in Danish, so I’ve written out instructions and done a chart in Excel.  I’m a very basic knitter so on a scale of 1 to 10 it’s about a 2 difficulty wise. LINK If you don’t want to tackle that you could always pick up Emma Kennedy’s rather enjoyable Killing Handbook or the guide to Copenhagen, and twiddle your thumbs until series II of Borgen starts on January 5th.     Right, I’m off to knit my Birgitte Nyborg power suit mug cosies.

After yesterday's snowflake crafts it's a double whammy for Karen who gets her Christmas TREE craft on the calendar! This is a tree in the shape of a Sierpinski gasket - a fractal creation that has smaller and smaller patterns of triangles cut out until there is (theoretically) no area left but an infinite array of impossibly small triangles. This is just an approximation! Other tree news this year, which we'll pile in here as we're running out of days: There's no tree at Tate Britain, as they are remodelling the Atrium. After last year's stupendous LEGO tree at St Pancras, this year they have gone for a giant gold ribbon making up a cone shape, but no actual tree. To make up for that, here's the tree from the Rockefeller Center in New York, where they really know how to do this sort of thing: