I'll be honest - I don't drink anymore but when I did it was straight from the fridge and it never hung around long enough to warm up 

 the gift would be wasted on you then Soozy

We have a £5 limit for those over 21 in the family; brother and wife, sister and hubby, and nephews and neices over 21.

 

It makes for some creative buying over the course of the year! Usually I get all their stuff in the sales straight after Christmas

Woah woah, back it up- Cinds bought her mr a gamekeepers day?! Where?! Rexi, great idea on the spend limit, we do that too, it's great fun!

Maybe it's in the other random thread. I know I saw it somewhere.

Thanks sooz, I was just wondering if its in the north east or another part of the country. It's an unusual gift I was telling the buddies that I bought a lovely gift box from the cinema for my SIL! It's 2 tickets to any movie, a chocolate pack and a sharing combo platter. It's worth £30 and is selling for £20

I helped my Mum finish off her xmas shopping today.  If there's anything better than doing the xmas shopping it's doing it with someone else's money

 

She very nicely bought me some Beyonce Heat Rush perfume which is surprisingly nice for a celeb perfume, a bath set and some boots.  

 

I've done my lists and I am a wee bit further ahead than I usually am at this time of year

Well done Ells I'm behind on gifts compared to last year, I think I'm a craft addict

i love that too (and i'll wrap their purchases!)

Machel if I post you a big box of stuff will you wrap them and send them back to me?

I've changed my avi for xmas 

 

 

How gorgeous am I????

I would, I love wrapping I should start charging people, I've heard so many people saying they hate it!

You say that now Saz but I have 4 big sacks of toys for my own children and I'll have countless others to wrap once I'm doing buying for everyone else!

is it just paper or would you like ribbon and bows?  (main item gifts have special wrapping!)

The works!  

Ribbons might slow them down too much in the frenzy of unwrapping

I used to not wrap anything when my eldest was young, I'd just sit everything out for him but the OH insists on having everything wrapped   Does he help me wrap anything?  Does he heck!

Make him do all the wrapping Ells! 

Forget wrapping use Christmas boxes,they are gorgeous.Assemble the box and pop in the gift(s)

^cute boxes!!!! Where from?! Here we go then my festive friends... Time to get excited!!!!!!

Ells, I love your avi

I got mine from QVC

Ideal Christmas card for a certain member

 Thought I might aswell get into the xmas spirit.

Thanx for this Sweet, my Bil and his GF are so hard to buy for and you've just solved that one for me!!

Not a gamekeeper, a lion keeper.  I haven't bought it yet.  I have just done that name a star thing for him, named the star after his mam & dad as it would have been their 50th wedding anniversary Christmas week.

That is a nice idea. *makes a note*

Note for Ells (I think - it may be Jen though) re the V Tec Innotab - I gave it to Jack yesterday and we had a little play for about half an hour before his party. He loved it (even though he's very used to 'proper' lap tops and consuls etc.) We only just got started but it looks pretty easy.

Happy to help jen it was a total spare of the minute buy, but mr summer is the most impressed with that one Lion keeper sounds good! So unusual too

There's a couple of boxes of cards in tesco's that are sprouts, they're really cute!

That's good thanks Soozy, hopefully my nephew likes it aswell

Well.....are there any xmas trees up yet in our FM's houses??

 

I'm doing my Mums at the weekend and maybe mine too although Monday will probably be better.

Mine will go up around the 15th or 16th.

Don't forget http://www.portablenorthpole.com/home  for the kids this year.  The message is even better than last year's

 

They had messages for adults last year but none this year yet  They were quite amusing

tree is up on saturday, just want to clean the carpets first

 House gets gutted in preparation of the tree going up.

I always do a bit of kitsch somewhere around the house.  We used to have a huge inflatable Santa (and then a Rudolph when Santa deflated beyond repair) at the top of our driveway chained to a lamp post.  Once Rudolph finally keeled over I thought I'd do something different.  So I have.

 

I've bought one of those naff snowing christmas trees 

 

I may be spending Crimbo on my own this year.

And I get gutted having to prepare it all 

 

I bought a little sign for my kitchen the other day - it says

 

'Housework makes you ugly'.

Cosmo love it! I'm putting our main tree up on Sunday. But seeing as we're having an elf party on Saturday.. I think I'll put my upstairs tree up before then!

Sooz, great sign