BOL have great discounts on best-selling books:

If you want to give designer labels - check out these lower prices:

A good little stocking filler for p&p; only:

 

 

Cards:

You can go down the same route and buy your cards in the January sales or summer clearances or you can make you own. This does not have to be a complicated matter - simple designs are often the most effective. Look around for well priced card, some paint/glue/glitter/sparkly confetti etc. If you have children you may already have much of this in the house already (could the children be persuaded to make the cards?!). A potato or old sponge can be cut into festive shapes for printing - a red Christmas tree shape on green card is very attractive. You could cut snowflakes from plain paper and glue these to a contrasting colour. If you are very organised you could press flower petals in books during the summer and make wreath designs with them for your cards. All these ideas can be used for gift tags also and for decorating plain brown wrapping paper - much cheaper than Christmas wrap. If you have a computer it may have programs installed with printabale card designs for A4 sheets of paper - these can be nice too. Many discount supermarkets sell value envelopes or you may find that you can get away without for cards that you hand deliver.

Decorations:

Homemade decorations can be really lovely and cost very little. Traditional things like coloured paper chains are really nice hung up in place of tinsel. Very attractive tree decorations are small match boxes wrapped up like presents with paper glued on to look like ribbons and a thread attatched for hanging. Cookies on ribbons are lovely - if you want to eat them better make them a bit last minute! Use a drinking straw to make a small hole near the top prior to baking for the ribbons. If you would like them to keep for future years use salt instead of sugar in the recipe and add a couple of tablespoons of PVA glue to the mix - bake lightly. For a very natural look to the tree slice oranges thinly, skins and all, into round slices and dry them out on your oven's lowest setting for a few hours - then thread them on ribbon or string. Gather pine cones in the woods, dry them near a radiator for a while (days, weeks) - dot them with glue and sprinkle with glitter - garden centres charge a lot for these! They look lovely piled round the bottom of the tree. If you know of a local source of holly or ivy a few sprigs are very effective - layed on shelves, or around candles and cones as a centre piece for the table.

Vegging Out!

A fantastic collection of festive recipes.
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