Today's guest post is from Cass who you can find at The Diary of a Frugal Family. Cass is the sort of woman that everyone needs in their life, she is funny, clever and has the most amazing heart. She also creates fantastic meals on a budget, tweets to relax and says nice things about me. Some of the most popular recent posts on The Diary of a Frugal Family have been about having a Frugal Christmas and there are some really great ideas which I am going to steal adapt for my family! Now over to Cass.
Christmas
isn't just about one day to me, it's about the whole period leading up to it
and in fact I enjoy that just as much, if not more than the big day
itself. I love to see the children's
excitement and anticipation building throughout the month and I think it's my
job to make everything about Christmas as magical as possible for them.
They both
have a Christmas tree in their bedrooms and decorate them however they want to
in whatever colours they want to (which would probably bring me out in a cold
sweat if they had carte blanche over the tree in the living room) and they also
hang a stocking on their bedroom door. I
normally buy a few packets of chocolate coins and every couple of nights I pop
a few in each of their stockings so they wake up to an extra little treat 'from
Santa's elves'.
We do all
the usual things in the run up to Christmas but Christmas Eve is probably my
favourite day, even more so than Christmas Day, so I thought I'd share our
family's Christmas Eve traditions with you.
We start the
day with homemade pancakes for breakfast followed by a trip to the cinema to
see a Christmassy film and usually a trip to the shop to buy anything that I've
forgotten about. Once we get home,
that's usually us done for the day and we snuggle on the settee with our
blankets and watch more Christmas films (usually Elf, Santa Buddies or The
Santa Clause) and play a few games together.
When my
husband gets home from work, it's time to bake cookies for Father Christmas and
this is the only time every year that he
bakes (or does anything kitchen related) with the kids. They always make chocolate chip cookies
together while I try to relax in the living room with a book (or more recently
Twitter) although it's quite difficult as all I can hear usually is 'Daddy,
we're making them too you know' or 'Daddy, can I stir now?'
After cookie
making, it's bath time where there's usually bubbles and splashing and much
excitement as they know that the pyjama fairy usually visits while they're in
the bath and leaves some new pyjamas under the tree. Last year she even left dressing gowns
(seeing as they were on offer somewhere) which caused squeals of excitement
(them not me).
When the
kids are ready for bed we give them a present each, usually one that'll keep
them occupied and quiet for a while – this year they'll be getting a little
magic kit and a french knitting kit.
Then it's dressing gowns on and outside to sprinkle the reindeer dust
before putting the chocolate chip cookies and a glass of baileys on a plate for
Santa.
After
they've gone to bed, we relax with a takeaway and a film, finish any last
minute wrapping, argue over who gets to drink the baileys and lay all the
presents out in colour coordinated piles (we all have different wrapping paper
so I don't have to write tags out lol) before heading off to bed for an early
night ready for the day ahead....
