Friday 13 November 2015

Christmas Catering

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My current £30 weekly food/toiletries spend will rise as I start to factor in items needed for Christmas on the food front.

This week, I spent £37.44, the extra going on ingredients for cake, puddings and gluten free baking trials.

One week will see a few bottles of beer, cider etc (we don't go mad).

Another week will be meat, sausages, bacon, ham etc. Not huge amounts (except for a small turkey) but enough for 4 people for 5 days with leftovers to re-purpose and freeze for January eats by us! I think I will be able to do that in the next 4 weeks then should be fine to revert back to normal.

We will be opening and counting our £2 savings jar soon, which will go towards presents. I have already got what I need for my friends local/postal presents. Just had to pick up something today to finish those off.

We don't like to go too mad over Christmas and when we don't have visitors (every other year), we are more restrained still.

For Christmas Eve we all buy each other presents, 2 for each person there (but not for ourselves obviously), each to be no more than £1. They must be useful, personal where possible and nothing to eat or drink. It is for all of us, our favourite time.

It is like a secret Santa thing but DB's family have been doing it since before he was born and is something we carried on once married. Now DB and DDiL are carrying it on, but just with us and hopefully one day with their own family. They do something different when with DDiL's parents.

I usually write out the labels so only one style of handwriting is available. We either save old Christmas paper or this year, will be using saved brown paper from postal deliveries.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.




11 comments:

  1. You are so good with your money I must try harder to bring ours down more x

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    1. We try but it can be difficult some weeks. The toiletries have lessened greatly over time as we use less and less products to do the same jobs.

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  2. It's so much better not to go mad over christmas. Last year we had a much more restrained christmas and we all felt better for it, both physically and mentally. Our bank balance was pleased too!

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    1. I think for some, it is just an excuse to overspend and to heck with the consequences.

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  3. We used to do the huge overspend every Christmas, the house was always stuffed to the rafters with food, most of which we were still eating our way through at Easter or later! We never went into any sort of debt, but we did spend lots of money which could have been better used elsewhere.
    Two years ago, for the first time ever, it was just the two of us at Christmas, so we cut right back on the food shopping. We still had plenty, in fact slightly too much, overdoing it is a hard habit to break! I still get a huge turkey, about a twenty five pound weight bird, but it feeds us for ages, I make 'ready meals' and freeze them, and a huge amount of soup is made for the freezer too.
    We spend quite a lot on DS and DDiL, but it's a joint present. They get two or three small personal gifts each, but the main present is something such as John Lewis vouchers, or a prepaid booking at a nice hotel for a few days, they get to choose the date. They've got loads of 'stuff' and we dont want to add to it.
    I'm absolutely guilty of spending far too much on DS when he was young, he always had an obscene number of presents, but he's our only child and we were both on very good salaries, and we enjoyed seeing him opening dozens of parcels. Those days are long gone now, well, until we hopefully have grandchildren to spoil!

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    Replies
    1. It is so easy to do. We always had a battle with DB's mother who would bring literally a carrier bag full of Club biscuits, plus packets of this, that or the other.

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  4. We start our food "treats box" in September, it lives under our bed and we have great fun seeing what we have collected. Middle of November we start buying extra cheeses and fresh treats. We are all vegetarians so usually make a Chestnut Wellington or a Nut Roast.

    Only two of us this year as two of the children are miles away and other daughter and family who live round the corner have other plans this year...they did "ask permission" but we weren't going to say no now were we?

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    1. Not really. Our first Christmas was a bit strange but after that one, it got better.

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    2. I need to amend this post...husband has lost his job yet again...or rather he is being 'let go' along with many others as the company he works for is failing fast. This time there will be no redundancy package to keep us afloat as he has only been there for fourteen months, He was made redundant December 2013 the longest serving employee of twenty three years and we cancelled Christmas that year. We are doing the same this year as money will be even tighter

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    3. Sorry to hear that, the economy is a right bane at the moment. I hope at least he will get some unemployment benefits. I wish him good luck for another job quickly and you both to have the strength to cope.

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  5. Your present swap sounds like a lot of fun, and very challenging shopping! xx

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