Merry Christmas Eve my friends!

I decided to just combine the third week and last few days of advent to do one longer post for the Lupicia Advent Calendar. Since this is the last post, I will also write my overall thoughts at the bottom.

Day by Day Updates

Lupicia Advent Day 15: Christmas Wreath Tea

Christmas Wreath is a blend of black tea with apple, cranberry, cinnamon, cardamom and other festive spices. It’s a nice cheery tea, though I have to admit that it really reminds me of T2’s Baked Apple Tea!!

Lupicia Advent Day 16: Tea Spoon

I was literally just telling some friends yesterday that I’ve only got 2 pieces of tea merch from the advent and today I got the third piece! This is such a cute teaspoon and since somehow my home only has full sized spoons and Chinese soup spoons, this will definitely come in handy.

Lupicia Advent Day 17: Cookie Tea

I could smell the “cookie” the minute I opened this – I think it’s a warm nutty smell that reminds of freshly baked cookies. Overall, the tea reminds me of White Christmas. It wasn’t my favourite flavour but I didn’t have any problems finishing this.

Lupicia Advent Day 18: Hokkaido Royal Milk Tea

This was another long box which meant another packet of tea! While I’m one of those people who likes to steep their tea multiple times, don’t even bother doing that with this one. One long steep with milk added at the end is how you get the milk tea colour and taste. If you try to have it straight and with milk (i.e. two cups of tea), the “milk tea” cup will be too weak.

There are some white crystals in the tea bag so I’m thinking that these are sugar crystals because this tea seems to be naturally slightly sweet. If you drink this straight, a shorter steep will have a lighter colour tea that’s also pretty good and has milk tea vibes

Lupicia Advent Day 19: La Vanille Tea

I thought this one was very apt because at my first sip, I thought: hot vanilla ice cream? While the vanilla note isn’t as strong after a while, this is still a really nice tea overall!

Lupicia Advent Day 20: Jingle Bells

Isn’t today’s tea cute?? The box matches the tea name AND they made a special tea bag design for it.

Jingle Bells is a black tea “scented with the flavors of refreshing grapes and fruity sparkling wine” and you can smell the grape the minute you open the packet. The grape flavour is just right – not too strong and doesn’t feel artificial, so I enjoyed this very much!

P.s. the tea is so fragrant that my husband came out of the bedroom asking “what is that sweet smell in the bedroom?”

Lupicia Advent Day 21 and 22: Honey Kompeito and Merci Mille Fois Tea 

I missed a day yesterday because… it was kompeito and I’m not a fan of kompeito. This was fine, it’s super sweet so I’ll probably use it as a sugar substitute 

Merci Mille Fois (“thanks a thousand times”) is a black tea flavoured with raspberries, white peach, and strawberry and decorated with flower petals. I’m not sure if it’s the strawberries but the scent when I opened the packet reminded me of champagne, and I think it’s because I’m reminded of Rose royale (my favourite Lupicia tea) which also has strawberry notes in it. It’s a light fruity tea with a floral after note that develops the longer you steep the tea

Lupicia Advent Calendar Day 23: Cache Cache Tea

The second-last day of the advent calendar gave this Cache Cache tea. I still remember the first time I had it – I found the fruity notes very subtle, really like a black tea with something hidden and I remember raving about it on my blog. Sadly, the second time I had it, the fruity notes were strong and it just tasted like a nice flavoured tea. 

This time, the tea was the nice flavoured fruity tea. Not exactly “hidden” but still a nice morning option!

Lupicia Advent Calendar Day 24: Small Dish

It’s Christmas Eve today, so this is the end of the advent calendar. It’s been so fun to open these every day, and it’s sweet that for the last day, we are getting our final piece of merchandise! It’s a small dish – I think suitable for loose leaf, to place used teabags, or even as a soy sauce dish. I don’t have anything similar so this sounds pretty good to me!

Overall thoughts on the Lupicia Advent Calendar

This is one of my favourite Advent Calendars to date, and it’s not just because I have a bias towards Lupicia. Normally, when I think of tea advent calendars, I think of tea and only tea, and the whole thing is evaluated on how much I like the tea. However, Lupicia gives you enough tea for the whole month plus snacks plus some small items that you can keep after and I think this variety is what distinguishes it from the rest.

In total, I opened:

• 1 tin of tea (tin is reusable)
• 2 packets of tea
• 3 food items
• 4 small items
• 14 individual tea bags

Craft Update

I’m also very happy to say that I have finished my cross stitch!! I was slightly worried that I wasn’t going to finish it before the end of the new year but the back stitch process was much faster than expected. I thought it was pretty cool how all the ink has washed out, and now I just have to think of whether to frame or find a way to use it. Also, I tried to have a neat back but it’s erm, looking very impressionistic!

I have another cross stitch project coming up, because I want to give that to a friend, but I’ll probably start that in 2026.