Christmas – gift baskets!

Like many families, our budget this Christmas is tighter than ever. I feel disorganised as I’m not as well organised as normal, but I have made a start on the shopping and the Christmas lunch is ordered and paid for from our November budget! The good thing about it being cold is that the boys are happy to eat stews, soups and jacket potatoes – these are all fairly cheap to make and therefore saves me money on the food bill! 

Christmas presents we have cut back what we buy for “grown up” family, as otherwise it gets rather expensive! At Easter we were told off for being overly generous, actually we had spent less money this year than ever before, by making our own Easter gifts, they did look good though:

 Pretty cool even if I do say so myself! The good thing about making these baskets up ourselves was that we only added things we knew people liked and the boys got involved in decorating and filling them too! 
Yesterday I popped out to Lidl and stocked up on cellophane, they have it on offer at the moment for 99p a roll, it’s not the strongest, but works well enough!  Ribbons and tissue paper I collect throughout the year, i collected three new packets of tissue paper from a charity shop for 50 pence a couple of weeks ago much to my delight, so it’s worth keeping an eye out! You could use tinsel or old tree decorations to adorn your hamper. No basket? No problem, an old cardboard box will do the job! I’ve used old sheet music to decorate an old shoebox which looked fabulous!

First Christmas hamper of this year is here:

Th

The bowl is plastic (it came with a pre-packed salad i bought which was reduced to pennies!), the tissue paper is from the charity shop find, the ribbon is from a gift I received for my Birthday and the cellophane is from Lidl. The contents:

 The Baileys’ was a sample they were giving away a while ago, the socks I purchased in the sale in July for 50pence, the hot chocolate was free with the Telegraph (which was free from Waitrose as I spent over £5 on groceries and used my Mywaitrose card..!) the face mask was £1 and the love hearts cost about 50pence. So, what do you think? Coming in at under £2.50 including wrapping, it looks rather pretty and is especially for the individual it’s been made for, I just hope they’re not reading..!

Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? 

Ms G x