The Post-Christmas Post

One of my favourite things about Christmas is picking out gifts for everyone and this year was no different so I thought I'd share a quick run down on some of the things that I gave and received.

Mr Click is the main person I have to buy gifts for and he's especially difficult because he has his birthday just over a week before Christmas. I try and save his bigger presents for Christmas so that he's not unwrapping a DVD while everyone else is getting cool new toys to play with.

This year was no different.

I also managed to get him a bit of a theme with his gifts which was unusual because that's normally something that he would do for me. With that in mind I managed to pick up a copy of Minions on blu-ray for his stocking and then included a whole bunch of Minion-related knickknacks. Then I tied his stocking to his main present by including the Eric and Ernie TV special that was on some years ago; his main present was Morecambe and Wise (the BBC series) plus my personal best find of the Thames Years on DVD too.

For his parents we put together a personalised hamper. It was great fun trying to find things which we could add to it and I have a feeling that it's something we'll do again in the future. Plus wrapping the box and all the goodies to go in it kept me occupied for hours.

My Mum's been baking cakes so I found her some shaped baking tins and a really cool cake decorating book. And for my step-dad I knitted a little Shaun the Sheep based on the pattern for the sheep from the Nativity I knitted (after I realised that one of mine bore more than a striking resemblance to the animated character).

I was thoroughly spoiled this year.

Mr Click really outdid himself. My stocking included the Labyrinth soundtrack which I mentioned wanting to get (in passing) about six months ago. He also got me House on blu-ray; I had no idea I was getting it (though I suspected I might be getting a TV series, I had no idea it would be House) and we don't normally do TV series on blu-ray so I didn't even realise it wasn't DVDs until he pointed it out to me.

I've also got a Tolkien colouring book (technically I have two as I got one for my work Secret Santa, so that's one to keep and one to colour), and I received an activity tracker. Unfortunately that last one didn't get on with the app that was supposed to work on my phone but it worked fine on Mr Click's. So I let him have it and we've ordered a Fitbit for me.

My Nan and Mum have supplied me with a couple of crochet books (and Nan included some crochet hooks with hers so I spent a bit of time Christmas Day getting some crochet practice in). My aunt and her family sent a box of goodies but my favourite is probably this mug:

It's become my return from dog walking hot chocolate mug.

And we didn't miss out our Tara-Tup on Christmas Day either. She got a stocking with a selection of treats, a stuffed Santa and a squeaky cracker. The Santa's squeak lasted all of about thirty seconds and although she's had the bobble off his hat and most of his belt off, he's still her favourite thing from the day.

Tara got really into unwrapping presents and we had to stop her from getting too carried away a couple of times. Mostly she was happy playing with the wrapping paper we had discarded but there were a couple of times where she tried to unwrap gifts we hadn't planned to unwrap yet (or helpfully removed the tags so we had to chase her down to see who they were from).

All in all, it was a very good day. Made even better by the fact that, for the first time in over a decade, I had a full ten days off work to enjoy.

It's been a pretty good holiday.