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a post by the lovely Becky (still rhyming)

Becky blogs at family budgeting about living creatively on a family budget and we are delighted to share her guest post today.

I want to share with you a little secret I learned and Christmas. I think it’s a secret that needs to come out!

Basically we need to spend less and chill out a bit more.

If we close our eyes an think back the Christmas memories that warm us are not ones that involve expensive gifts or huge amounts of effort sustained by our parents every day throughout  December. So really listen up…now you are a parent you don’t need to spend too much money or wear yourself out with effort.  I’m going to tell you why.

My best ever Christmas gift was my tiny tears doll. She was the only gift I got that year from Santa and I loved her with every bit of me. I still have her. One present really can be enough.

My next best gifts?  The following year mums friend Mary knitted tiny tears clothes and then there was the momentous year Tricia (my older sister who I always thought hated me) made me a dolls house from a cardboard box. (I had far more expensive gifts but have no real recollection….these are the ones that mattered to me.)

In terms of Christmas time it’s not expensive pantomimes or trips to see Santa I I recall my best memories were of going to the crib service, always getting a selection box, and delivering our toys to Dr. Barnardos. Dad use to insist we gave away three toys each to  children who might need them before Santa came to see us and we loved this ‘special job’ He had done this as a child and my children now choose 3 good toys to give away too just before Christmas.

I recall Boxing Days at granddads writing treasure hunt poems for the snowman to deliver after lunch. We did this every single year. My little family do this now too.  I adored putting up decorations with my mum and her telling me stories about my grandma and now I do just the same with my children. Precious times. But these weren’t frenzied must cram them in, photograph them , blog them, share them traditions they were gentle and well spaced and lovely and in between was lots of time to relax and play and be.  Christmas was a holiday.

We would have a nice lunch but it wasn’t complicated and extravagant. Our crackers were always rubbish but we giggled and they banged!

I like to go and see the kids carols at school and I love it when carol singers visit. My memories aren’t about big events, plush advent calendars and expensive gifts. But I do recall playing with wrapping paper under a big table and helping mum stir the pud. We’d watch special films together on the TV like the wizard of Oz. and eat too much chocolate. We relaxed, playing monopoly for hours.

I had magic Christmas's and my parents didn’t overspend or try too hard to make them magic. So they weren’t stressed or frazzled. They were fun and happy and relaxed.

Our little artificial tree had the same baubles every year and it was perfect. We never did get to Lapland and the Santa we saw was always on at the community centre not the posh garden centre. That was fine too.

Don’t strive for perfect, get uptight, stressed or in debt. Kick back a bit, enjoy your family and friends. Little treats and traditions mixed with twinkly lights, special telly and cheery songs we all know are magic enough. And for those that believe in it the Christmas story , all on it’s own, is just the greatest gift.

If you keep your Christmas simple on every level  it will be RICH  in pleasure and it will indeed be memory making. 

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........ my beautiful first baby! Not mine but the very lovely Jayne's from Mums the Word. Here is today's lovely guest post about Christmas.

Back in 2007, my life was very different to how it is now. I’d been married for just over a year and I was working full time in an Accountants office, doing book-keeping and accounts. We lived in a flat which was small but plenty for Husband and I and our day-to-day lives were average for a married couple in their early 20’s. We enjoyed spending time with friends and were still firmly in the Honeymoon period of our relationship.

Sometime in November, I started having sporadic periods of sickness and horrible waves of nausea. A guy I worked with was a pipe smoker and I had to ask to be moved away from him in the office because just the smell of his very strong pipe tobacco would have me rushing to the loo to throw up and I could barely keep anything down. One lady I worked with kept joking that I must be pregnant, but I was adamant that I wasn’t as I’d been told it would be very hard for me to conceive with the various health issues I’d suffered in the past.

By December, the sickness was worse and I thought I must have developed a stomach ulcer. I went with my colleagues to my works Christmas do and was unable to eat anything that was put in front of me. I had to power on though as I had a job to do, as well having offered to host my Mum’s side of the family at our house for Christmas Day.

By the night before Christmas Eve, however, I was so ill that I was bringing up blood and Husband over-ruled my stubbornness, insisting on taking me to A&E. A few hours and some tests later, in the early hours of Christmas Eve, Husband and I were waiting for the inevitable “you need a camera down your throat” conversation because of my ‘stomach ulcer’ when my doctor peeped his head around the curtain. He looked nervous.

“Err” he started, oh-so eloquently “Mrs. Crammond…did you know that you’re pregnant?!”

You know that expression “You could knock me down with a feather”? Well, in that split second when I glanced at my Husband I understood exactly what that meant.

Finding out I was pregnant the day before Christmas was the best gift I’ve ever received. I still hosted my relatives for dinner, although cooking with hyperemesis wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done! Sausage was born the next August and our lives haven’t been the same since. I never thought I’d get to be a Mum, so to me she’s our little Christmas miracle.

Skip forward six years and I’m currently pregnant with our second child. That means another Christmas of staying away from the pudding (I’m diabetic) and definitely avoiding the port and lemon, but knowing that just after Christmas I’ll get to hold another little miracle makes it all worth it.

Well, I say that now, but I might not be so amiable when everyone else is enjoying the pate and Baileys on the 25^th! That’s okay, I might make them all do a second Christmas, just for me, in March! 

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..... a delicious guest post from Kelly. (still rhymes)

I’m delighted to be on Little Lily Pad today in the run up to Christmas. It’s hurtling towards us at quite a pace. On the fifth day of Christmas I wanted to share a really simple Advent Activity with you that children really enjoy and that requires no baking goddessery of any kind: Snowmen Cookie decorating!

We had a playdate last week with a few friends, and Dimples requested that we decorate biscuits. I had seen a wonderful post on melted snowman biscuits which gave me an idea to work with. So we popped to the shops for various ingredients, and this is how we made them.

You can make biscuits, but I used shop-bought Digestives. Make a glace icing- add small amounts of milk to large sifted amounts of icing sugar and mix until thick- and spread on the top of your biscuit.

Decorate your 'snowman'.

Admire your handy work. Than eat. Or in DImples case, pick off the decorations, lick off the icing and feed the remaining biscuit to the dog.

Bio: Kelly is the face behind the vintage silhouette at Domestic Goddesque. She eats too much cookie dough to have a waist that small. She is a thirty-something Mother of two absurdly photogenic little girls, is married her beloved DH and endures daily battles-of-will with the dog she refers to as the Wonder Hound. She likes to avoid housework as much as possible, preferring to bake, craft and drink cocktails. Sorry, did I say cocktails? I meant coffee. And nap. She likes to nap too. When not blogging, you can find her haunting Facebook for interesting snippets of gossip, or throwing her wit around the twittersphere. (She may have made that last bit up too: she's not that funny.)

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..... a brilliant guest post from Mary Key (I love how these surnames rhyme).