Breakfast with Santa - 18 sleeps to go...

Yesterday we all headed to our local garden centre to have breakfast with Santa. This isn't something I had heard of before and it really appealed to me. The girls obviously still love to visit Santa (being only 6) but truth be told it is not that engaging for the rest of us. However, add in a full English breakfast and all of a sudden we are interested.

At our old house we always visited a garden centre on Christmas Eve to see Santa and then we would have a fry-up in the local cafe, as we have now moved and the old option is not feasible any longer, this is a wonderful alternative for us.

I'll let the photos do most of the talking as they really do speak a thousand words -

We arrived at the cafe to find the tables decorated for those who had booked. Crackers, hats, colouring packs and a candy cane each awaited the kids. The kids can enjoy as much squash as they fancy and we had a hot drink each (included in the price).

The food was really excellent, a good clean presentation and quality products. A big thumbs up!

Once breakfast was finished the manger started to whip the kids up into a frenzy, by chatting about Santa and jingling bells (which apparently Santa left last year) and he got the kids and adults all shouted for Santa to arrive with us.

The children were all invited up to choose a present with Santa, from oldest to youngest. Someone picked the cuddly dog that JJ fancies the staff went out of their way to find him one too.

Once the kids had their presents and our food was all finished, we assumed it would be time to go but it was a fantastic surprise to find that each of our children got given a really good sized gingerbread man, a little bag of icing and some decorations . They had the choice to decorate them there or take them home.

I think you can see that we all had a super time. The garden centre we visited was in Hastings and is fairly small but it was excellent. The Manager was at the front greeting everyone and telling them about the 25% off Christmas decorations promotion on that weekend, the manger in the cafe was welcoming, the food was exceptionally good (and we will be going back for sure), the toys that the children received were appropriate and fun to play with and I loved the fact I could take pictures of the kids with Santa for no extra cost.

This really was good old fashioned and down to earth fun. It was not big and glitzy but it really worked and at £9.99 per child and £7.99 per adult it was great value for this time of the year.

There are 139 garden centres within the Garden Centre Group and many of them are offering breakfast with Santa and there is a tea with Santa option too. I'd recommend this to anyone, we had such a super time.

I was pleased to find that there was a really good stock of Christmas decorations and seasonal gifts too.

Disclosure: We received this experience free of charge for the purpose of this review. I have not been instructed what to write and I remain honest. 

Christmas crafting - 26 more sleeps

As you know the kids are counting down the sleeps until the big day and I'm pleased to say we are now at just 26 more.  Thankfully I'm up to date with the shopping and our Christmas is being spent as part of the community here so I don't have that many preparations to be done, it is fabulous!

During the run up to Christmas the kids and I will be keeping a 'sleeps diary' as we count down in anticipation of the fun ahead, we are doing this in collaboration with Mothercare. This weekend the girls and I enjoyed some time together making some crackers for our breakfast Christmas table and also making decorations to go up on our stairway as part of our Christmas house make-over.

We used instructions and a craft pack sent to us by Cartridgesave.co.uk. They have a number of free downloadable instructions and templates for easy Christmas crafts at the moment and you might fancy having a look on http://www.cartridgesave.co.uk/christmas.

It is also worth checking out their Christmas competition if you are a blogger, as they are giving away £500 in Amazon vouchers to the blogger who uploads the best Christmas cracker that they have made and decorated themselves. You need to create your cracker using their easy guide, then write a post and share photos of your cracker and send the photos and blog URL to them on christmas@cartridgesave.co.uk by 18th December 2013.

Here are mine and Miss E's entries to their competition. Miss E wanted to copy my design and she cut and stuck it all herself, I think she did a fab job and I even prefer her finished cracker to my own!

Miss E, aged 6 years

Mummy, aged considerably older than 6 years!

As well as the crackers the girls enjoyed glass painting some decorations that we had bought and they want to give some of them away as gifts. I think they will make lovely little mementos for people. I just need to string them up.

Rebecca at Here Cme The Girls has put together a great post with 100 crafts for kids.

Disclosure: I am working with Mothercare to create a sleeps diary during December, they have provided me with PJ's for the girls and vouchers for my time. Cartridgesave sent me a craft pack to make my crackers and be able to enter their competition. I have not been instructed what to write by either party and as always I remain honest.

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Christmas is coming.. 33 more sleeps

The excitement is already building in our house. I know some people do not like mention of Christmas too early but as we have been making Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes since early September it feels like we really are in full swing with the festive season. Today nearly 100 boxes have gone off to be delivered to underprivileged children across the globe and the kids school has had its Christmas fete.


Christmas is such an important time to us as Christians and we will be enjoying lots of worship and time with family and friends. The Christian Centre where we live is closed for two and a half days and those days will be spent with us all (about 75/80 of us in total) in the Great Hall worshipping, playing games, watching movies, cooking for each other and sharing gifts. To say that the children are excited is the biggest understatement there is. Already they are looking at my calendar and working out how many sleeps it is until the fun starts.

The kids have started to learn their lines and songs for the Christmas performances at school and at church and I am pleased to say that my shopping is well underway. It will be great this year to be celebrating Christmas with our community as it means I do not have to get sucked into the trap of having to go out and do a silly £200 food shop for the festive couple of days.

I've been inspired by Debbie at Johnson Babies to make some gifts for the kids teachers and the lovely Mary of Keynko who has made the kids a knitted elf ready for us to play elf on the shelf in December but more about these activities as they happen. The children have their advent calendars at the ready (just the bog standard chocolate ones) and now I have enough skills to sew them some beautiful ones for next year (did I tell you I've been taking sewing classes?).

To start getting the kids into the Christmas mood (like it was difficult) Mothercare sent the girls a beautiful padded onesie each, sadly JJ is too much of a giant and cannot fit in their clothes anymore. Such a shame, he would have loved these tartan PJs -

and looking at these little PJ's bought back memories of when I could dress the girls in mix and match clothing. In fact they has some Christmas PJ's similar to this many years back now -

Here they are the very day they received their Mothercare onesies, they literally ran upstairs and put them on and they have been on every night since (excepting wash days).

Mothercare '25 Sleeps' Competition

Ohh and while I am talking Mothercare you might be interested to hear about their '25 sleeps' advent competition.  Go and visit their Facebook page for the full details but basically, you need to upload a picture of your sleeping child and 24 will be picked to feature in the online advent calendar, you'll also bag yourself some Mothercare vouchers if your child is picked.

Here is a picture I could upload for the competition, weren't they cute?

Disclosure: Mothercare have sent us some PJs and vouchers to join in with their '25 sleeps' countdown to Christmas. I'll be posting about what our family gets up to in our preparations for Christmas. They have no instructed me what to write and I'll remain honest.