Frosty the Snowman - it's the 2025 Christmas thread!

Abbafan1972

fionaandphil said:

I saw the Lindor shortbread in Tesco today, they are on offer at £5.50 for a box with CC, but only a few of that flavour left

Lindor shortbread, that sounds nice! 

Coxy11

I think we might leave the wine offer. TBH neither of us drink dessert wine and we are happy with bucks fizz/prosecco for our Christmas lunch. Thank you all for helping me see sense lol.

I've just had a couple of days away with Mum in Suffolk. We visited some lovely towns including Lavenham yesterday. Lots of independent shops and I got a bracelet for DD for her birthday. It's gift wrapped so I can't share a photo but it's silver tone, with stars on and adjustable ties. Nothing jumped out at me in terms of Christmas gifts but before I went away I noticed Michael Portillo is touring so have bought ILs tickets to see him at our local theatre. They like him....nuff said. So that's another two ticked off the list. 

Not sure if I said that I'm getting DH, BIL and SIL to recreate a childhood photo from c.1984 that ILs have on their sideboard. We will restage it with them as adults and frame it. We've sourced outfits from charity shops so it should be fairly inexpensive.

Spendless

Both bracelet and photo sound fab coxy.

Portillo tickets reminded me of recent incident at work when I went out of my way to help a couple of people who  told me they were going to the house of commons. It took till the following day before I realised they were Reform councillors.

Link has come through for us to get the gift vouchers for filling in survey. They are love2shop ones you receive. 

mandco

@Coxy11. It’s easy to get caught up in a deal and not realise you’d actually be buying things you don’t want/need sounds like the wine offer would have been one of those.
theatre tixs if it’s someone they like are a fab idea 
the bracelet sounds like something my dd would love too.
Recreating their childhood photos sounds lovely it’ll be interesting to see how much everyone has changed 

@spendless the survey vouchers being the love2shop ones you’d hoped for is a definite win 

Why is it a few days away goes so much quicker than the wait for it? We had a good time for the most part & the weather was better than originally predicted which was bonus but taz came down with some lurgy(which I think I’m now coming down with) mid week meaning I ended up spending quite a bit of time in our apartment sitting around while he slept- on the plus side I made the most of it by watching Xmas movies & drinking hot chocolate.
didnt get a chance to look for any Xmas gifts as such but did pick up a few more unusual flavoured ciders.

still no shortbread lindt to be found - apparently they are selling out as fast as they come in so it’s a case of just keep checking 

mandco

Had some Lidl freebies from last week expiring so went to the bigger store and popped into b&m next door too - loads of Xmas stock in didn’t get much today but did pick up a 2026 Disney calendar £3 a screen cleaning kit for ds £4 and a small tin of shortbread £2 - not expecting much at that price but the tin had a cute highland cow on it and dd is into them at the moment so thought it would make a nice storage box for her to keep once empty.  They had lots of toiletry/beauty type bits under £5 ideal for token gifts/stocking fillers ect a few wicked themed bits -hair claw clips,lip balms,bath fizzers ect so seems that’s going to be a quite popular theme this year.
also managed to Pick up a couple of the 97p cadburys chocolate bags & 75p wine gums that are currently on offer at sains for stocking fillers 

mandco

Popped into Aldis today they had a small amount of Xmas stock in including the frozen turkey joints £6.99 so picked one of those up. Some really nice dog toys in on this week special buys and really reasonably priced £3-£4 picked up stegosaurus for our dogs Xmas stocking.

Coxy11

I went to A!di yesterday too and got some florentines (much smaller box than last year) and some Christmas crack aka the sour cream and chive pretzels. Both DD and I could eat the whole packet they are so good. Need to find a vermin proofed storage solution for the utility/garage. 

Off to the large mall today to shop for DD and DDIL birthday gifts (same day). I have a list so hoping it won’t be a whole day out!

Coxy11

Birthday gifts bought/ordered. Couldn’t find DIL’s dressing gown in Next - was a bit of a jumble sale look due to the sale and don’t get me started on the fitting rooms. I tried on a pair of jeans, no assistant, discarded clothes in virtually every cubicle and a loud annoying beeping from the disabled cubicle (which was empty) Rails so full of clothes that I had trouble hanging the jeans up. Might just be my sour grapes as I applied for a job and got a NO after just 24 hours. Clearly they need staff….

Got DD a Dior compact from JL from her eclectic Pinterest board, also some new vinyl and funky tights. Two pairs of animal spot tights from M&S marked up at £12 and went through at £3.59 so I went and got another pack. 

The Lindt shop had the new limited edition x 4 boxes plus they featured in the pick n mix. I got two boxes for £13 and offered my ancient cardboard loyalty card - they don’t use those anymore in favour of a digital version. However the lovely ladies said they’d honour it, and said grab a bag and choose 16 chocolates from the pick n mix for free. This included the wafer squares and the mini santas/reindeer. Family very happy tonight! One box of chocs will go to DIL and the other I’ll keep for Christmas. 

Found the shopping mall quite overwhelming tbh and it wasn’t even that busy.

mandco

@Coxy11 sounds like a productive shopping trip even if you couldn’t get everything in store. great bargain on the tights I’d have picked up extra at that price  too and bonus free Lindt yum

I’m an early morning shopper when possible get there for opening and hopefully done before it starts getting busy - the lack of staff everywhere and long queues makes shops seem so much busier anyway but cant be doing with the aisle blockers, clothes dumpers and general lack of consideration for others that seems so prevalent in society now. We were late going shopping on Saturday and by time we got to sains at about 1pm it’s was absolutely rammed you’d have thought it was Xmas week it was that busy

Ordered a couple of bits for dd from Fenty as they have a sale on I got her this https://fentybeauty.co.uk/products/cherriez-gone-bad-hydrating-lip-care-duo-keychain?variant=55090857116034  then added an extra lip mask https://fentybeauty.co.uk/products/plush-puddin-intensive-recovery-lip-mask-barbados-cherry?variant=48833387659552 to get free p+p. with it being on offer anyway if I take off what I would have paid for p+p it worked out at £9 and the cherry version is hard to find so seemed daft not to get that too rather than pay postage.

Also ordered a couple of Xmas themed edible treats for the rabbits - last year they sold out within weeks and never got any replacement stock. taz was mad at me for not getting them when we saw them so figured I’d get them while they have them this time. 

PennysIntoPounds

Spotted in Tescos today...