* Walking in a Winter Wonderland * - It's the 2015 Christmas Chatter Thread

mrsinvisible

Will l never learn? just lost a whole post, dammit. Free, l buy for 43 people, and then l buy for DS2 who 'can't shop for toffee' and from DGS for his mum and dad, and then DSIL has lots of theirs sent here so they need stored, and people keep on having babies!
l keep on saying that l must cut down, but they are all dear to me and appreciative of my gift, so.....
l stopped doing birthday presents tho, except for kids and grandnibs, so that's under control.
l don't spend a lot on anyone, but a lot of thought goes into them and they are wrapped with love, and given with pleasure.
l had a good browse in Matalan yesterday, but didn't buy yet, waiting for a 20% if they have one. Then l went to M&S but missed the shortbread promo, so guess where l am going today after my Skype fix? Be good, no , be SPECTACULAR all, .

FeistyFidget

Freespirit your framed scrabble tiles are beautiful!

Msgigglewick thanks my lovely, in the interest of keeping to a budget, we've gone with a lighter grey and charcoal, I wanted the yellow to brighten it all up as we've gone for this wallpaper on the accent wall;

I did consider adding a splash of yellow to the curtains and even have access to my sewing machine, but I don't know if I can be bothered with the extra stress lol.

Moneymission, you can buy the shadow box frames in Ikea or the range quite cheaply. The bells are sold online and if you wanted the writing in vinyl I could easily whip it up on the silhouette for just the cost of materials and postage

Msgigglewick, just had a peek at your recent makes on facebook LOVE them! You are very talented missy

I'm not going to lie, I was about 19 pages so behind and I will never catch up so have skipped through!

I need some advice from you lovelies, our finances are about to be quartered with me on maternity and I really want to have the benefit of being at home with little one as much as possible for the first few years so this will be long term. We have one family of 6 that we buy for every year as they buy for us, there are the parents, two smaller children and two over twenty children, even cutting the bill to £10 a head it is adding to £120 for birthdays and christmas each year (plus anniversary gift for the parents). The problem is that I have broached the subject with the parents before about cutting down the spend and they've reacted okay but said they'd still buy for us which makes things awkward so we've just carried on buying. Now that their oldest children are 20 and almost 22 it's got me at the point of whether I should just buy a token gift for the 4 adults and usual £10 each for the littlies. How would you cope with this scenario?

Clumsy42

Morning everyone.

Still nothing christmassy going on here. Perhaps when my sister's birthday has passed I'll get on with looking for presents for everyone.

My mum keeps asking me where my christmas list is. And I keep arguing with her that she doesn't start buying presents in october anyway! But she disagrees.

I really want to get to a primark soon. But it's hard to get to ours. I mainly go in for the geeky t-shirts but the last time I visited they only had small sizes. Very annoying. Starting to wonder if my size vanishes because of those people who buy in bulk and then sell them on ebay.

msgigglewick

ty feisty just trying to find my feet on where is best to advertise what i can do... everywhere seems to make it so hard atm. love the grey with the yellow

I would do as you are.. maybe a tin of sweets for the adults, or one of the m&s biscuit tins that go on offer of the week.. then a token pressie for the kids...

i am only buying for my nephew this year.. my ex sister in law has not spoken to me for about 6 months now so i can't see her wanting to exchange gifts for everyone anyway. Shall just be getting token gifts for the adults or making them something. College fees and with dd3 starting her gcse's a year earlier means lots of trips to pay for this month. we have 4 birthdays in the space of 2 weeks to find money for too.. so adults will have to either love the food gift or pass it on lol.

Even my older two girls are only having little pressies this year.. dd3 has asked for some art pen's for her main pressie and dd1 can have a steam gift card for a new pc game. Think they might be shocked but ho hum. fed up of falling over their clutter anyway lol.

After the year we have all had i will just be glad to get to new years without anyone else passing on. This years festivities will just be spending time together more than present exchanging i think.

dropsofjupiter

freespirit66 wrote: »

DROPSOFJUPITER ooh thanks for that! Did you get anything?

Happy birthday for the 1st Freespirit, sorry I missed it. Your cake is beautiful, your daughter is so talented.

The range stuff is all beautiful, and I couldn't resist some hanging tinsel stockings for 79p each! Only picked up a packet of malteaser reindeers in B&Ms, just to make sure they're the same as the Easter bunnies of course. Packet disappeared that evening!

IrishRose12

dumpling wrote: »

I really want to get a Harry Potter dressing gown from Primark for one of my daughters. I so wish they did home delivery. I will ask my hubby if he will go and see if they have any left as it would be a great present.

Dumpling I bought some of the HP dressing robes on Thursday and a few more yesterday for gifts (and one for myself:o ) If Primark done an online shop I think I'd be bankrupt :rotfl:

If you don't manage to get one by Thursday and still want one let me know and I'll try and pick one up for you when I'm in then
I can't promise they'll still be there but I can see.
I've learnt from my lesson from Primark, when I see it I buy it cause you might never get the chance again:rotfl: I learnt the hard way when I wouldn't pay for an Olaf raincoat during the summer:(

Starting o have a good clear out here this weekend in prep for Christmas. Not evenoing to try and sell things on Ebay as people want things for nothing these days:mad: I had a lovely 4 piece clothes set that was bought for my wee one but she never got wearing it. Cost £15 and I put it on Ebay for £8, people sending e messages asking if I would take £3 and £5 for the set:eek: I'd rather give it to charity than some greedy people on Ebay.

I was making those little teacher gifts for the summer for a charity here and we made so much money for it, but unfortunately I don't have the time to make them up anymore so I gave the remaining sets and supplies to my neighbour, and she's going to make them in a Christmas Version for teacher gifts. She'll be listing them on Ebay with half the profits going towards the Christmas gift appeal for children in the local shopping center. The other half is to cover the costs of P&P and the actual items.

My kids teachers and assistants loved them in June, so much so some of them asked to buy some for their own children's teachers:rotfl:

After the clear out I'll then see if I can find the bag of Christmas cards I bought last year and see what I don't need. I know I bought too many last year, so will see about using a load of them to send to PostPals children, then the rest can go to the charity shop.

Hope everyone is having a lovely day so far

kaya1991

Wow, I feel so behind already!

Thanks for the heads up on the Disney DVDs BBRosie, that's massively helpful.

Also thanks to everyone for your kind words about the article and my blog, I really appreciate it!

Lush has its Halloween and Christmas bits in now - I went in yesterday and it was MANIC. Some gorgeous new things this year, and I couldn't resist picking up one little bath bomb to tide me over

Having a very lazy day today - doing a bit of blogging, and also discovered some Christmas films on TV, so that's me sorted! Hope you've all had good weekends!

p-pincher

HI Everyone

Free- I agree about the prices lol. I think once the Christmas food hits the actual shops it the same price. Every year when I get the m and s one I have a dream list of what I'd like then end up getting only a coupe of things. You might be able to order everything in store and pay the balance with a gift card. I usually get the buffet party food bits pretty early and freeze them because when they first come out there normally on three for 2. The mini pies last year were amazing.

Not a huge of amount of christmas prep this weekend but I have made a start on my skint January box. The thinking behind it is dh gets paid his end of December pay early, normally a week or so before Christmas so by the time christmas and new year is over were always short. So for the last few years as well as having a christmas food box I have a January box. It's really only filled with essentials. Things like toilet roll, Deodorant etc stuff that if we ran out I would have no choice but to buy. I've got things like washing up liquid, 2 shower gels and shampoo/conditioner. I'm starting to feel a bit more organised xx

MoneyMission2015

p-pincher wrote: »

HI Everyone

Free- I agree about the prices lol. I think once the Christmas food hits the actual shops it the same price. Every year when I get the m and s one I have a dream list of what I'd like then end up getting only a coupe of things. You might be able to order everything in store and pay the balance with a gift card. I usually get the buffet party food bits pretty early and freeze them because when they first come out there normally on three for 2. The mini pies last year were amazing.

Not a huge of amount of christmas prep this weekend but I have made a start on my skint January box. The thinking behind it is dh gets paid his end of December pay early, normally a week or so before Christmas so by the time christmas and new year is over were always short. So for the last few years as well as having a christmas food box I have a January box. It's really only filled with essentials. Things like toilet roll, Deodorant etc stuff that if we ran out I would have no choice but to buy. I've got things like washing up liquid, 2 shower gels and shampoo/conditioner. I'm starting to feel a bit more organised xx

I love that idea PP, I might have to think of doing that myself just in case.

Feisty - thank you for the offer of doing the vinyl for my frame, mrsgigglewick has sorted it for me though, just waiting for me to get the frame size. You're all so creative on here, I am so not creative at all. I have a more logical brain like my dad & my sisters have the creative gene from my mum.


And now after all the discussions on M&S food I am going to have a look : )

Arthien

Afternoon Christmas fairies!!!

Hubby and I got back from 10 days in Canada at the start of the week so now the jet lag seems to be disappearing I'm raring to go with the Christmas preparations! We went to a couple of Hudson Bay stores while we were there (if I remember rightly it's the oldest store they have) and their Christmas sections were amazing! It was like being in the Christmas bit at Harrods but everything was reasonably priced! All I can say is it's a good thing we had limited luggage space

Thanks to everyone who suggested Matalan as the place to get a good Christmas fix, we got matching his and hers red fair isle jumpers, which also coincidentally match the Christmas teddy bear I bought as a joke last year, so now I'm thinking about doing a 'family' photo of me and the bear for hubby's Christmas card :rotfl:

We also bought an amazing patchwork style brushed cotton bed set, which I am under strict instructions must not be used before November... We'll see how that goes!

Has anyone ever made sloe gin? I picked about 3lbs of berries yesterday from the car park at work and I've given it a go but I've no idea if I've done it right or whether I'll even like the taste. Hopefully it's not £20 on gin down the drain!