Valentine’s Gift List with Amazon Handmade {Ad}

We all know the pressure I/we felt at Christmas; the overwhelming guilt of not having the tree up until the 13th of December, the burden of ensuring all the kids create magical memories to treasure for all eternity and the stress of conjuring up traditions for the boys to pass onto their sprogs in years to come. Valentine’s Day, on the other hand, is my time to shine! No pressure for memories, traditions or internal sparkling – just a whole lotta LOVE!

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Why We ARE Doing Presents This Christmas

Last year when I boldly declared “we’re not doing presents” I felt relieved, wholesome and that my soul had been relinquished from the consumerist-Demogorgans that feast on the festering flesh of Christmas morning aka our children. A touch dramatic? Perhaps! But hopefully this conveys the modicum of hope this brought to my festive season of 2016. I’d, of course, hoped this would become our Christmas tradition and our children would shed their greed nourished, Philistinian skins to reveal Swallow & Amazon-esque delights – charmingly feral, lacking in materialistic desires; but then I realised I’m not 21 and my pelvic floor is shattered, so promptly readjusted my expectations.

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Monday Must-Haves: Smellies for A Christmas Stocking

I’ll keep it short and sweet today, as not only is it a Monday morning and caffeine is calling – but we’ve all got Christmas shopping, ahem, I mean work to do, so I’ll get to the point…

There was a time, circa 1995, that getting “smellies” for birthday and Christmas presents was about as crap as it could get – it usually meant a satsuma scented, animal shaped BodyShop soap stuffed basket, topped up with a lot of straw to make it look even more full of shit than it really was. Oh how times have changed (as long as there’s no Sanctuary gift box in sight) if someone were to present me with any of the following “smellies” at anytime of year I’d be bloody chuffed; if they could also throw in a voucher offering 2-3 hours of child free time to indulge in the loveliness, then even better – but that’d just be asking a bit much methinks!

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Ba-humbug to Baby’s First Christmas: Gift List

At the risk of coming across like the Grinch pissing on Santa’s parade, I’m going to admit I’m not a huge fan of going overboard for a little one’s first Christmas (each to their own though!). This has good and bad points for Casper: on the plus side – he will not be sporting a green and red, elf onsie, neither will he be found supping on Grandma’s xmas roast given the mini-blender treatment; on the downside, my poor little Tiny Tim will not be inundated with so presents he doesn’t know which one to bang/throw/dribble on first. Maybe I’m just incredibly cynical after a couple of 1st xmases, but new parents, I hate to put your cinnamon and clove scented candle out but your bubs will undoubtedly give a glassy eyed clueless look for a large portion of the day and, although a cliche – they WILL genuinely enjoy the box and packaging so much more!

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