Great Virtually Free Stocking Fillers Hunt

Scary_Fish

that is the loveliest thing.....<sniff> welling up now...

really am....not being sarky, that is so nice. ::)

Nici

Hi, I am following this with great interest
My little girl will be approx 9 months come christmas, I have no idea what sort of things to put in her stocking.
Our house "rules" for stocking items has always been that they must cost less than £5.
Bought her christmas pressies with my boots points. They even let me have the 3 for 2 offers so did quite well! ;D

Sarahsaver

9 month olds, hmmm...
socks
a nice beaker
toys of her favourite tv character
all from poundland of course! ;D

I got my daughter a jar of xmas babyfood for her 1st xmas, you could make a child friendly mini cake ;D

jockettuk

9 months wait till they 9 yrs arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

KK

I wouldn't worry too much about your 9 month old - my little girl was 6 months for her first Christmas and we got her things like inexpensive bath toys, wooden rattles etc that were fun for her (check out Asda and Tesco). To be honest, they really don't know what it's all about. Another idea which a friend of mine did is to fill a baby wipes box with different pieces of material and let your daughter spend hours pulling them out like wipes. You could also recycle old christmas and birthday cards and make cards for her to look at - my daughter loved these pictures. Another friend of mine cut up a catalogue (e.g. Argos) and stuck pictures of familiar objects onto card for her baby.

I don't think I did a stocking for my daughter until she was 1.5 years, and each year (she's 4 now) it has been more and more fun. Last year's one was great - sparkly wands, crayons, hair clips, chocolate santas etc. I also bought an advent calendar from Avon which had little pockets for each day of advent which I filled with a little treat (I'm afraid mine were all edible!). We always had traditional things in our stockings as children - always a Terry's Chocolate Orange and monkey nuts (for some reason!), but we still used to write my mum a list of suggestions to pass onto santa! It depends on whether the stocking presents are just little extras or whether they also contain the main present. Some families have table or tree presents which I think are the same idea. I think it is Austria or Holland where they fill the child's shoe with sweets for the stockign equivalent.

16011996

best thing my kids each had was a family i made of sock puppets when they were about two, made one for each of them. never seen something get so much use out, so much more than anything bought. eldest used one of the boxes from something to make a theatre, and youngest one still plays with it now.

hth,

160.

Sarahsaver

The mail order catalogues have several free gifts knocking about. i have a watch, teddy bear, steamer (not for the kids that one!!) juicer, headphones... all for things I ordered but were out of stock, and I got the free gift anyway. On its way next is a spiderman video ;D
I get my kids £10 worth of stuff from poundland, put it in a cardboard box with a sheet of paper over the top so they can punch a hole in it. Also asked friends who dont have kids to give me the boots cuddly toy vouchers.

janeytel

During the school holiday's the kids made shrek 2
t-shirts for 50p. ;D
They designed and downloaded the t-shirt transfer off the Shrek2 website, then printed it onto t-shirt transfer paper which I ordered as a free sample from Avery! and then ironed them onto Tesco 50p t-shirts from the sale.

RufusA

Big thanks to poppet for posting the Baker Ross link. Just had a look on the site, and as stated there are loads of things that work out 10 - 20p if you buy in bulk and split.

This is absolutely perfect for my daughter's party with 20 odd goody bags to fill. Saved me a fortune!

Rufus.

TerryJeffery

For my daughter's 5th birthday party, I bought a load of boxes of girls bubble bath packs - with a soap, bubbles, shampoo and hairslides etc - they'd been reduced to about £1.50 in Woollies cos the boxes were broken, empty the boxes and wrap the individual item in coloured cellophane and tissue paper, with curly ribbon on and that was their main party bag, but also gave out birthday cake and sweets in bags - much better than the rubbish you get in ready-made party bags - put all the things in a decorated box and let them pick out a gift each as they were going home - it looked really effective and much cheaper than buying toys etc that fall apart before they're in the car going home!!