Christmas 16 mega index/christmas chat!!!

VfM4meplse wrote: »

You poor thing, you should be spending time with your baby! On the bright side, by the time Christmas comes your little one will be reacting to lights and smiling and gurgling like a good 'un

Thank you. I hope she will. I've gone a little mad. Any "baby's first Christmas" things I can find I now have. Including her own personalised stocking, decoration and present sack and even though she won't understand yet I got an elf on a shelf.
I think I'm a little more excited than usual. If that's even possible.

I am mostly good at OS ways except when it comes to one or two things and I loose the plot and spend like there's no tomorrow. Christmas being one of my weak spots.


This year I've bought over half the 40 gifts I give by shopping throughout the year and have gone well under budget so far. I even bought some in the January sales!


I try to be sensible with gifts and generally am. When it comes my children it's harder - I don't mind investing in longer term gifts - such as instruments, bikes etc
My daughter would like an electric guitar - she's been playing acoustic for a couple of years. We set her a savings target and if she reaches it - we will go halves on a good quality guitar. Her target is over 6 months pocket and birthday and chore money - a lot for an 8 year old. But she's determined and focussed and we're taking advice from her guitar teacher.


I really fall down on excessive spending on food and decorations etc. This will be our first Christmas without my mother - so tough for me and the children who miss granny very much. For her last Christmas, dad decorated their house like a grotto with thousands of lights and snowglobes etc. It was magical.
The children loved it so much I'd like to recreate a touch of that this year. I think I have plenty of lights (though the mice may have eaten them) and lots of tree decorations. I am perfectly capable of making decorations too but I am drawn to certain things like light up decorations that we don't have.
On the other hand, I know Christmas is a short period and anything I buy will have limited use each year (assuming it lasts more than one season), so it seems unwise to spend much. Better buy a nice light that lasts the whole year if that makes sense.
Even so, I get drawn to decorations like a moth to a flame!

Things like that do last a long time. I remember when I was 4 or so hearing my mum yell "ouch" late on Christmas Eve. She came up stairs to show me her foot, Rudolph had stood on it when she was feeding him his carrot she said. She had a perfect hoofprint on the top of her foot.
Turns out she had dropped a can of fruit on it when she was making the trifle and it happened to make the right shape. But it stuck with us for years and I told EVERYONE about Rudolf.

I saw Christmas decorations in the window of John Lewis at St Pancras this morning.

I am still beavering away at my Christmas makes, here are the most recent

http://snadralovesblogging.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/50-makes-for-christmas-11-to-20.html

I have just bought loads of seeds from the garden centre, all at 50p and some from Wilko's (Own brand) for 10p.

My God daughter and Niece have both got into growing their own food, so I am making them up a hamper with seeds, gardening gloves that I got from Wilko's 3 pairs for 25p and reduced pots (10p, 25p and 50p) and a trowel and fork that were under £2 in the gardening sale. So £6 for a gift that will last a year and help save them money.

I have a lot of baskets that I got from the market for pennies......... literally 10p each and I have some from fruit gifts that people have sent us over the years. I am always on the lookout throughout the year.

Wilko still have their garden sale on and remember at the moment up to the end of October, most garden centres have reduced plants.