Now that the Christmas lights are up across the UK and the sound of those chiming bells gets ever louder, the festive period is well and truly on its way!
The average mum is thought to spend 288 hours shopping, 4.19 hours wrapping presents and 3.03 hours decorating the house ahead of Xmas, which fully illustrates the work and the cost that you have ahead of you, whether you are a parent or not.
Though many of you will have decorations stored away, some of you will be much less organised. There are many ways to decorate your house to look great and to do so cheaply.
You can buy fairy lights for as little as £6.99. If you are really short of cash – you can hang fairy lights to a sturdy metal frame for an elegant and inexpensive outdoor tree effect, and real Christmas trees can be picked up for as little as £20.
There are many appropriately Winter-themed decorations that you can buy such as icicle lights, baubles, as well as charming non-essential additions like “Big Decs Owl Decoration”, which can be found at department stores across the country for around £15.
Food
Essential Christmas food involves turkey and the obligatory parsnips and roast potatoes, the preparation for which most of you will be versed in.
Obviously, you should never consider preparing all of your Christmas meal a month in advance for health reasons, but things like Christmas cake can be prepared now and will save you a lot of hassle in the coming weeks.
You should consider drawing up your Christmas menu now to help organise and speed up the process just prior to the big day.
Presents
Most important of all, many would argue, are the presents.
There are a great number of video games, DVDs and Blu-rays released just in time for the Christmas season, which can be bought at little cost, especially if you buy online – Amazon will even wrap the presents and have them sent directly to the intended recipient if you do not have much time on your hands.
The Lazy Girl's Guide to Life 