best old style money saving christmas hints and tips

funkymonkey849

Tip: don't buy chocolates for people in November because you'll find yourself at 6pm on a Tuesday night curled up on the sofa halfway through a box of chocolates after having tried to resist for a good 45 mins, poor effort

Justamum

funkymonkey849 wrote: »

Tip: don't buy chocolates for people in November because you'll find yourself at 6pm on a Tuesday night curled up on the sofa halfway through a box of chocolates after having tried to resist for a good 45 mins, poor effort

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Patchwork_Quilt

morganlefay wrote: »

For extra, edible tree decorations I buy a small box of something with pretty coloured wrappers (Quality Street is my fave) and spend a boring hour attaching cotton thread to each one so I can hang them on the tree instead of very expensive little choc Santas.

I do this and attach them with rubber bands, which is so much quicker and they are reusable.

Skye_Dancer

_Layla_ wrote: »

I'm making my own Christmas crackers this year, similar to ones I made in school many, many moons ago! They don't 'bang' but they look great. .

Toilet roll tubes
Crepe paper
Ribbons/Glitter/Glue/Cotton wool for snow etc
A little sweetie treat inside each one.

Put a treat inside the toilet roll tube, roll the tube up in crepe paper (allowing enough on either side to twist) tie twists with ribbon, and decorate as you wish.

Simples (And much better than paying stupid money for them!)

I've done this for the last couple of years, it's easy and very quick to do.

missychrissy

I used to make my own Christmas crackers, including snaps, when my children were younger. I could then personalise the gifts within, especially when we had family and friends for meals. I was a stay at home mum then, but now that I work full time plus it has dropped in my list of priorities.

I have to say that I don't pay silly money for crackers. Home bargains has good low priced crackers that will keep me supplied until I retire and can get 'crafting' again.

culpepper

You can always buy cheap shop crackers, carefully untwist the ends and poke a nicer gift inside the hole before retwisting. I have bought crackers in January before and saved them right round till next year, then disected them for the snaps and hats and just made new longer ones with the guts ,kitchen roll and crepe paper.
We did a themed christmas one year when my DD was Harry potter mad, she made tall wizard hats from paper and we just marked the cracker with a logo inside so that whoever got the logo must wear that hat. Then we made badges, keyrings , fridge magnets and fimo pencil toppers of owls and some animals . The cake was the snowball fight from one of the books with icing and little fimo people . Ive still got my pencil topper and key fob years later . You could do that for any kind of party really but crackers always feel mostly christmassy.

Winged_one

We bought our crackers at the weekend from Lidl. €4 for 8 crackers - which just contain a hat, motto, snap and NO gift!! Perfect!! Cos for us, the point about crackers is the fun of pulling them and everyone having a hat for dinner. The gifts had gotten SOOOO cheap and nasty in regular crackers, and not great but HUGELY expensive in the "luxury" ones, that this is a perfect solution. Small, brightly coloured and will keep DD happy as well as us.

Primrose

If you send out as many cards as we do, postage, especially overseas postage is a huge cost so this year everybody on e-mail will get a personalised letter via that route, as will overseas friends and relatives, and only those without e-mail and the elderly will get cards.
We will also not buy enough food to feed the five thousand on the basis that we need surplus food "in case people drop in". Yes, they do, but everybody is so full of food that usually they can't face yet another mince pie and so much stuff goes stale and is wasted.

sillyvixen

last year my mum and myself were looking round a local christmas craft fayre and saw some christmas shortbread nicely packaged for £5 for a few pieces - my mum commented on how nice it looked! nearer christmas when i was short of a stocking present for her i decided to bake some shortbread and package it in the same way - it cost about a pound to make a large bundle and wrap it in cellophane ( i got a friend to write the lable so it was not my handwriting) my mum admonished me on christmas day for going overbudget on stocking items and i had to admit i made it myself - she was even more blown away that i had gone to so much effort!

Stephen_Leak

If you are having the usual chicken or turkey (even if it's just a Bernard Matthew's turkey roll with a sprig of holly in the top!) and Xmas pud, I (OK, with a little help from Oz Clarke) can save you time and money with the wines.

The traditional Xmas dinner is an assault course of conflicting flavours, and needs a wine that can stand it's ground against them, but not simply overpower them itself. Oz and I recommend a Spanish Valencia Dry.

For Xmas pudding, we have the same problem with tastes, but sweet instead of savoury. Stick with the same region of Spain, and a honey sweet Moscatel de Valencia. Take a mouthful of pud on its own, then a sip of wine on its own. Then take mouthful of pud and a sip of wine together. Trust me, it tastes delicious.

And, both of these wines are available in supermarkets at good prices. ASDA currently have the dry one at just £2.98 and an award-winning sweet one at just £3.48 a bottle.