Advent Calendar

I bought this Kaisercraft advent calendar kit months ago.
I think it was September before I took it out of the packet, then took ages painting it all. The instructions I read said it would need two coats but I gave it three and still wasn't happy with the finish (but was extremely bored of painting by then)

Assembly was straight-forward enough but I was concerned as to whether the MDF would have swollen with the paint and then not fit properly.
After all this I read a blog post where someone suggested assembling it all first and then simply spray painting the whole lot....yeah, wish I'd read that before I started!

The calendar had been sitting about for a few weeks because, although I'd painted it dark brown, I had no idea how to decorate it.
I was hoping that the shops would start getting their Christmas decorations in and that it would inspire me.

Then, last week I realised it was December 1st (today) and that I needed to crack on else there would be no point at all in having an advent calendar.

I am a fan of the Tilda range of papers so eventually decided to use a combination in duck-egg/ brown.

I'm ashamed to say the calendar is still not complete but I have put some chocolates in anyway and it is nearly done ...

I need to number all the boxes (but don't like the huge numbers that come with the kit) and also I want to do something with the big area in the middle.

Maybe by next Christmas I'll have it done :)