Advent calendars are a fun way to keep track of the time while waking up with some swag. Ben Hewins of London wanted to raise the stakes from a daily chocolate Santa to a full on gift with a cabinet straight outta The Price is Right.

"She is quite creative and is always making me cool things so I wanted to do something for her this year that was a bit quirky, creative and original," Hewins tells Metro.co.uk,"So, I came up with a giant advent calendar with actual presents behind every window."

Hewins told Metro that his wife was first to come up with the personal, DIY advent:

A few years ago for Christmas, my wife left a present for me everyday during December in one of my drawers with a heart-shaped note that read “on the xx day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…a new pair of earphones for your gym tunes.

That's hard to top, but Hewins found a way, picking up "cheap off cuts" frm his local hardware store, and then just "[winging] it from stage to stage.

How did Mrs. Hewins react? "She got quite emotional and was very overwhelmed," he said.

The couple have an adorable history of romantic gestures.

The last time I got that reception was when we were dating and I wrote a poem for her which I then got printed on a T-shirt. I presented it to her in our local Pizza Hut and she cried her eyes out and made all the other customers very uncomfortable as they tucked into their stuffed crusts.

It's all so sweet, until you remember that now Christmas Day has to live up to the countdown.

Or is Christmas a journey, not a destination?

Thank you, Mr. Hewins, for teaching us the real meaning of Christmas.

Wow, it turns out there's a whole lot more going on on parenting websites than talk about diapers and school lunches. On the UK site, Mumsnet, a mom wrote a post about her active and adventurous sex life with her husband, including their affinity for "masturbating each other" in movie theaters. She assures the other people on the site that they're not doing this during kids' movies, which is certainly very kind of them, but that didn't seem to make the act any less offensive to the other moms who chimed in.

Her full post, titled "Sure we broke the law today but how serious would it be if we had been caught?" reads,

DH and I have a fairly active sex life, usually have sex around 3 times a week although lately is has been more often. When we were younger (46 and 42 now) we were more adventurous, lots of dressing up, toys, and DH used to love filming me which I'm not into anymore. He's quite an exhibitionist and I suppose I am too.

Whenever we go to the cinema he loves to touch me and the last few times we've gone we've ended up masturbating each other and we've both came. I should add at this point that it's usually at least a certificate 15 film so there are no young kids around. We also tend to go to the early afternoon shows which aren't so busy so I'm not sitting next to anyone at the time.

I can't deny that I get really turned on but have worried recently about the prospect of being caught and the police being involved. We both work with vulnerable groups and have been disclosure checked for our jobs so any criminal charge of a sexual nature would be very serious. DH isn't worried but I am.

We don't openly touch one another so that it's obvious. No flashing at strangers.

Yikes, that's a lot of information there, lady. Definitely way too much. And the other moms on the site did not mince words in their comments.

Luckily all those negative reactions didn't go unnoticed by the mom who'd posted it, who chimed in a while later to say that she'd got the message, loud and clear.

Although besides "loud and clear," she wrote "boot up the arse received..." Wow, lady, again—waaayyy too much information. KEEP IT IN THE BEDROOM.

Christmas is right around the corner, which means it is time for joy, merriment and love. That is, unless your significant other dumps you and you're left sobbing into your hot cocoa. According to ABC News, the holidays are peak season for breakups, so if you are looking for a pun-filled excuse to call it off, look no further than these 17 hilarious tweets.

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What is your #ChristmasBreakupExcuse?

Vlogger De'arra took the ultimate advantage of post-Halloween sales on jugs of fake blood. Putting together a comprehensive crime scene complete with handprints and footprints, De'arra put together an impressiveCSI-level crime scene and pranked her boyfriend into thinking she was murdered. LOL!

De'arra's boyfriend and vlogger in crime, Ken, was rightfully freaking the F out, as she put on an impressive acting performance by keeping her head heavy and her giggles inside.

One the one hand, this is a cool Tom Sawyer-y way to experience how sad people will be when you die. But on the other hand, you're pretending you've been stabbed in the chest with gory realism.

Ken reacts just as you would if you see your loved one lying in blood. Luckily, she starts smiling before Ken can full-on Romeo and Juliet himself.

This so-called prank really f*cked up, especially considering he probably had to help her clean up the fake blood afterwards.

Enjoy!

Sometimes you see terrible things on Facebook, you can't just keep them to yourself. So when a woman saw this post from a monstrous couple about their ruthless tipping policy, she had to share it on Twitter so her horror could be everyone's horror.

So I took the wife out to dinner last night, and we have always talked about doing this. You put five singles out on the table for the waiter/waitress to see. (Don't say anything to them) if they mess up, you take a dollar away. At the end of dinner, however much is left is their tip.

Ewww. There are so many things wrong with this and Twitter was quick to point them out.

1. Your tip doesn't just go to your waiter: It also goes to the host, busboy, bartender, and whoever else was helping out behind the scenes.

2. Even if the server was amazing, a $5 tip would probably still be way too low for dinner for two.

3. He calls his wife "the wife."

4. It's so wrong people worried no one would believe it.

5. It's so wrong people felt the need to find the couple and seek revenge.

Just terrible. And haven't we heard this before? Isn't there a plot from Seinfeld when George does this with a $10 roll of quarters? And even in the fictional world of Seinfeld, George starts with $10, not $5. And that was in the '90s!

Of all the Twitter outrage, this guy sums it up best:

Writer Alia L. Moore had an unpleasant dating experience recently. Over text, a guy let her know that he was free all day, waited until after she had made reservations, and then informed her that he couldn't get together until 9 or 10 PM. Moore canceled the date, sharing the texts on Twitter so her followers could learn a lesson about chivalry.

You're reading that right. She reserved an ENTIRE MOVIE THEATER, and then he changed his mind at the last minute. Moore kept her followers abreast of what happened from there:

Already, she was generating controversy.

But what Moore texted her would-be-beau next sent the Twittersphere into utter chaos. This came after he had asked how he could make things right:

After that, the internet exploded. People on Twitter started furiously arguing over whether Moore's words were justified. Unsurprisingly, their opinions had a lot to do with whether they were men or women.

And Moore was more than willing to jump back into the debate herself.

Clearly, this is a complicated story, and it brings up a lot of spoken and unspoken truths about gender and relationships in the 21st century.

But seriously, a whole movie theater? That's nuts.

Not even Jennifer Lawrence's quirky personality and love of pizza can save her now. The actress was the subject of an internet outrage after telling a story on The Graham Norton Show about how she once desecrated sacred rocks while filming in Hawaii... with her butt.

Lawrence was on the set of The Hunger Games at the time. "We were filming in Hawaii, and there were sacred rocks — I dunno, they were ancestors, who knows — they were sacred," she said in the interview.

Sacred though they may have been, that didn't stop Lawrence from using them for a... ahem, different reason.

"I, however, was in a wet suit for this whole shoot, so, oh my god, they were so good for butt itching!" she said. (Oh, good lord. Jennifer, why?)

Needless to say, Twitter was not psyched about her disregard for Hawaiian culture, or the fact that she was using it as a funny talk show anecdote.

Advice to any other "adorkable" celebs out there that think the internet will find it endearing when you use sacred artifacts to scratch your tush: Yeah, nope. They won't. Don't do it.

20-year-old student Morgan Svobodny was the subject of a prank by her 23-year-old brother Zach that is so ingenious and elaborate, he should go to jail for it. He took it upon himself to mail out a photoshopped Christmas card supposedly from Morgan and her new "boyfriend," rapper Chief Keef. Then he sent it out to their entire extended family.

The letter reads:

Happy holidays, everyone! I hope you all had an amazing 2016 and are looking forward to making 2017 even better. This year has treated me fantastic!

Since September, I've been in a very serious relationship with an amazing guy named Keith Cozart, a famous rapper who some of you may know as Chief Keef. He has many hit songs that you've probably heard, such as "That's The Shit I Don't Like," "I Hate Being Sober," and "These Bitches Love Sosa." Keith is an amazing guy with a lot going for him and this is the happiest I've been in at least 6 months! I dropped out of college last month because I found out that I'm pregnant and I'm pretty sure Keith is the dad (not positive though). Keith and I plan on moving to Atlanta in March and we couldn't be more excited!!

Best wishes to you all in 2017!!

P.S. Bang Bang

To make the prank sting all the worse, Zach didn't tell Morgan anything about it. She didn't find out until her bewildered relatives reached out to her about it, as she explained to BuzzFeed News:

My Aunt Jen called me regarding my ‘new boyfriend’ and that she had gotten a Christmas card in the mail. At this point, I knew Zach was at the bottom of it.

It certainly fit his MO. Apparently, Zach has been pulling holiday pranks like this on Morgan for years. Check out the Christmas "gift" he gave her in 2014:

According to Morgan, Zach chose Chief Keef because they're both fans of his, and because his explicit song titles were sure to scandalize the family. Especially when they learned she was carrying his (or someone's) baby.

The brilliance of the prank, and Zach's attention to detail, were not lost on the Twitter masses.

Is this the new gold standard for pranks? Or does it need a coyote? You be the judge.

A UPS driver called police after making a scheduled stop on his route and ended up saving a woman's life.

According to court documents obtained by CNN, a Robertsville, Missouri woman was being held captive and tortured by her husband, 33-year-old James Tyler Jordan, in their home for at least 15 hours. In that time, he "refused to let her leave, punched and slapped her, forced her to strip and sexually assaulted her."

Terrifying. Fortunately, the couple had previously scheduled a pickup by UPS, and he came just in time. The woman said Jordan was "holding a gun to her head and threatening to kill her, then himself," when the UPS driver arrived.

Instead of ignoring the door, the husband had his wife talk to the driver while he held a gun to her back. She clearly wasn't able to explain what was happening to the driver, so she scrawled "Call 911" on the package instead. This move saved her life.

The driver saw the note, called the cops, and a SWAT team arrived and somehow managed to remove Jordan from the home peacefully.

As if that story isn't crazy enough, the wife wasn't the only victim. Police also found a 3-year-old child in the home who had been locked in a room without food or water for 15 hours. The court documents don't state whether the 3-year-old was the couple's child, but one thing we know for sure is that whatever was happening in the house was incredibly traumatic and way out of the ordinary.

Jordan is charged with domestic assault, sodomy without consent, felonious restraint, unlawful use of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child. He is being held on a $100,000 bond.

The driver, of course, is a hero. And this provides a great lesson: if you ever feel unsafe, schedule a delivery.

Model Gigi Hadid concerned everyone when she went from skinny person to very skinny person seemingly overnight this summer. The 21-year-old has always denied crash-diet and eating disorder rumors, and opened up toElleMagazineabout the real reason she shed the pounds so quickly.

Hadid disclosed that she suffers from Hashimoto's disease, an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid gland. Typically the symptoms of the disease include intolerance to cold, fatigue, depression and weight gain, but Hadid curbed side effects by taking medication. She cites a change in her metabolism as the reason for slimming down.

My metabolism actually changed like crazy this year. I have Hashimoto's disease. It's a thyroid disease, and it's now been two years since taking the medication for it, so for the [Victoria's Secret Fashion Show] I didn't want to lose any more weight, I just want to have muscles in the right place, and if my butt can get a little perkier, then that's good.

Gigi's frame came under fire when designer Tommy Hilfiger dressed her in an oversized poncho during for a 2015 fashion show. Hilfiger argued that Hadid was "curvaceous​" as far as models go, and wanted to cover her up because she was not "as tall and thin" as her fellow models. For the record, Gigi was totally cool with the poncho and holds no grudges again Hilfiger.

Of course, Gigi maintains her physique with diet and exercise. She told Elle that she loves to box at the gym, but loathes doing squats. "They're painful, and you have to do so many for them to work," said the Victoria's Secret model. Relatable.

The year 2016 has been obnoxious, frustrating and fragile, like an Ugly Christmas Sweater. The ugly sweater industry makes topical tops every season to recap the year and show what memes look like IRL.

Behold, 2016's vast ugliness in a series of sweaters as ugly as the year's events.

1. The Make Christmas Great Again sweater, $49.95

I wouldn't sit on Trump Claus's lap if I were you.

2. The Ken Bone red sweater sweater, $49.95

I'm undecided on this one.

3. Oh no. It's an Elf Lives Matter sweater, $49.95

The most efficient way to show everyone at the party that you're awful.

4. The Don't Tread on Me sweater, $49.95

Put the "bright" in "Breitbart."

5. The Santa doing CrossFit sweater, $49.95

The first rule of CrossFit is that you don't not talk about CrossFit.

6. The dead horse-beating Hillary's emails sweater, $49.95

Dear lord this is just mean now.

7. The Mean Mr. Trump sweater, $26.99

If only his heart—and his hands—would grow three sizes.

8. The Dabbing Santa Sweater, $26.99

Yes, that was indeed a thing this year.

9. The Evil Kermit sweater, $32

Me: This is a cool sweater but $32 is a lot for a meme.

Me to me: It's only $32.

10. The Crying Jordan sweater, $19.95

You'll match your sweater when mom and dad fight.

11. The Stranger demagorgon sweater, $19.95

Your Christmas Tree can communicate with the Upside Down.

12. The Barb sweater, $49.95

Forever in the Upside Down and on this sweater.

13. The Fourth Day of Trumpmas sweater, $28.34

14. The Formation sweater, $19.99

Okay ladies.

15. The Lorelai Gilmore sweater, $30

Looks great with coffee in hand.

16. The obligatory Harambe sweater, $49.95

Of course.

17. And another Harambe sweater, $24.95

Yup.

18. And another Harambe sweater, $30

Duh.

19. And another Harambe sweater, $19.99

What is dead may never die.

20. And another Harambe sweater, $16.95

This one

21. A Dicks Out for Harambe sweater, $9.99

A twist on a new classic.

22. A *GIFTS* out for Harambe sweater, $9.99

A more PG take.

There's no question that navigating the murky waters of the dating world is a difficult task. And no matter how empathetic we ladies want to be to guys who are trying their best, sometimes they cross the line into trying way too hard. In a recent AskReddit, women shared all the ways they can tell if a guy is trying too hard. Here are ten of the best responses.

1. I think we've all had a dude-you-met-once-for-five-seconds pulling you in for an awkwardly long hug. I assume that's what suagrupp is talking about.

When he touches your body too much for the closeness of your relationship

2. RJ_McR has definitely had some of those awkward hugs.

"Where's my huuug?"

3. All datrandomgal is asking for is a conversation without sex talk. It's not that hard, guys.

When every conversation with them turns sexual. I have a friend who does that, ever since he learnt that I was okay with casual sex. Everything is an innuendo. It is super off-putting.

4. SpeedyEdie won't give into pity dates.

When guys try to get you to pity them out of hopes that you'll date them because you feel sorry for them. Ex. "I'm not that good looking." "I'm forever alone." It's is an awkward thing to do, and makes you look less attractive.

5. Want to impress Waxwalrus? Be a human with your own opinions.

Over-agreeableness. I think guys do this to seem more likable. It could work at first, but it definitely won't last long. If someone agrees with everything I say and every opinion I have, there's a 100% chance they're trying too hard.

I'm not looking to date a parrot, I'm looking to date someone with a developed personality and point of view independent from my own.

6. Mistah-Jay doesn't want to hear your brags, humble or otherwise.

Bragging. Seriously, it is the biggest annoyance. I don't give a shit how much money you make, or how many hours you spend in the gym. Just be real. Just chill.

7. I mean, SteroidSandwich isn't wrong. An elephant is a tad extravagant.

He rents you an elephant

8. No one is entitled to thewildbunny's time but herself. Tell 'em, girl.

Obvious signs of feelings of entitlement to your time. The first noticeable red flag for me is texting. Too much texting or any message indicating that the person is unhappy with my lack of immediate response is an automatic no. Needing or demanding a quick or immediate response indicates a potential lack of self-assurance and increased anxiety where the person is too fixated on external stimuli for reassurance. No thanks.

9. Shockingly, Haceldama hates when guys stare at her with the intensity of a serial killer. So weird, right?

Staring. Non stop, barely blinking staring.

Yes, you presumably like the girl. You like looking at her. But please, don't focus on her so much that you appear mesmerized by the way she's reading her menu. If the two of you are talking to a third person, look at them when they're talking, not the girl. And especially don't stare while she's trying to eat. After a while too much forced eye contact feels more like a threat, like the guy is less interested in you as a person and more as a potential skin suit or basement captive.

10. Yes, cubiles. This is the ultimate example of "trying too hard."

When you go to take out the garbage and he's hiding in your bushes.

Some bullies might get older, but that doesn't necessarily mean they grow up. Take, for example, the anonymous stranger who sent a Florida mom and substitute teacher named Kelley Markland a letter in the mail notifying her that she was too fat to wear leggings. What a wonderful human being!

On November 18, Markland returned home after a nice dinner out and found an envelope in her mailbox that contained a letter reading, "a woman who weigh [sic] 300 pounds should not wear yoga pants!!" The envelope also included a photograph of a woman bending over, and a meme of Will Farrell's Anchorman character, Ron Burgundy, saying "Your pants say yoga but your ass says McDonalds." HAHA, SO FUNNY.

Upset, Markland took to Facebook to write a post about her new fun pen pal.

Her full post reads,

So, I came home from celebrating a fun birthday dinner for Mia and we were all so happy! I open my mail to find this envelope with a silly picture (not me in that picture BTW) and a note. Apparently, I weigh 300 pounds and I shouldn't wear leggings anymore.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I care deeper and stronger than many. I am a sensitive woman and I despise cruelty towards others. At 36 years old, I am STILL being made fun of. Whoever sent this, be an adult and tell me who you are. JUST TELL ME!!!
I have never pretended to be pretty or look good in clothing, I have never tried to be flashy or show off.
Wearing my "fun" leggings gave me a tad bit of confidence in not looking sloppy all the time. I'm sorry that some of you may not like it, but I'm not dressing for you. All the hate in this world, and you have to pick on me for this?! Thank you for making me feel like absolute, complete shit. A wonderful night with my family had to end like this.....so unbelievably disappointed in people anymore.

But don't lose heart, reader, because after airing her feelings on Facebook, and receiving tons of great messages from her friends, Markland decided that she wouldn't let the rude note to get her down. She told Today, “I had to remember, if I walked around defeated and scared, then whoever sent that letter wins. And I wasn’t going to let that person win. At all."

The next day, although apprehensive, she put on a pair of leggings and went to the school where she subbed, only to find that most of the other teachers (and even the moms of some of the school kids) were also wearing leggings to show their support for her.

She told Today, “All the teachers were coming up and hugging me and showing me their leggings. So I knew at that point, it’s not about me anymore, it’s about all women.”

She also said, "[The response has] been amazing and mind blowing. It’s so inspiring to have other people telling me that what they’re doing now is because of this little act of bullying."

Now Markland's Facebook profile picture is a simple inspirational message, reading "Put on your positive pants…mine are leggings!"

As if you needed a reminder that a dog's love is the most pure and loyal kind of love, here is a heartbreaking video of a dog visiting her dying owner in the hospital that has the internet weeping.

Ryan Jessen, from California, went to the hospital last month with what he thought was a migraine, but turned out to be a fatal ventricular brain hemorrhage. In a video shared on Facebook by his sister, the 33-year-old is seen surrounded by his family and friends, including his dog, Mollie, who the hospital permitted at his bedside to "say goodbye."

Crying yet? You will. You can watch the deeply emotional video here:

The video has been watched 11 million times and shared nearly 100 thousand times, receiving thousands of messages of condolence and support. And there is a silver lining: Jensen's sister said that her brother's organs would be donated and were expected to save a 17-year-old boy's life in time for Christmas.

She also said Mollie, his dog, will remain in the care of his family.

I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to adopt every single shelter dog. I'm sure my landlord will understand.