I'm sure she is going to love it. I used to do advent calendars when I was a kid, but I think they were all chocolate. These days they make a whiskey one that I think would be interesting to check out, but it cost well over $100. We used to do the chain thing when we were younger too. You would make a chain out of paper and each day you remove a link from the chain until you get to Christmas day.
This is why we did it this way. Smallsteps can't have the chocolate, so we were padding them with fruit smoothies and healthy snacks! Now, we can have a bit of candy, but mostly it is stuff that she can use in some way.
There are some pretty insane "adult" ones now. 1000 of dollars for perfumes and makeups, dildos... endless commercialisation.
Haven't heard of the chain thing - might be good for Hive :D
Haha, yeah, It was pretty cool. That actually might be a good idea. That give me an idea for a post this morning. Thankfully I have never seen some of those adult ones you mentioned!