So, before we all forget, share your Christmas tips ready for next year!

Not to but snacks/chocolate/ alcohol or make enough mince pies/cake/sausage rolls et al as if all AC still lived at home, and expecting girlfriends/boyfriend and various friends to be turning up unannounced!!!!

I shall not be able to start "healthy eating regime" until 1st February instead of planned 1st January!!!!

Even if you are planning to eat out or go away, make sure you have something in the house you can cook just in case you don’t get away- transport problems, or illness for example.

Get out of the house as much as possible.

Arrange for DD1 to host next year. Yes!

Hibernate

Roll up a newspaper and wind Christmas lights round it, taping the ends to the paper. Stops the dreaded untangling each year!

We have a buffet on Christmas Eve, prior to the main event next day. This year we served up many of the buffet items in those plastic container you get from take aways (which we had saved up over the past few years). All stacked neatly and quickly in the spare fridge when we cleared up.
Paper plates for buffet - oh why did I not use them last year? They were a godsend - plates straight into bin after use. The only washing up was cutlery and bowls. I am going to get paper bowls for nuts and bombay mix etc for next Christmas Eve.

Paper table cloths if you have small children amongst your Christmas guests!

Phoenix dear, my mother invented the switched stockings ruse. Daddy had a pair of green kilt stockings and a pair of blue. For years I wondered why my sister and I had one stocking from each pair. Mummy told me why once I had grown out of believing in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

Oh, and save egg boxes during November and December. They are invaluable for packing small glass Christmas tree ornaments and it saves a lot of individual wrapping in newspaper.

Only just caught up with this thread and I'm laughing out loud at the roasted parrot!

I’m not laughing Chewy .....am licking my lips, sounds delicious.?
grandtante that’s a really good idea! ??

Luckygirl I use the tube from the middle of a roll of wrapping paper for storing lights.

Another tip

Keep a wrapped bottle of wine, box of chocolates or biscuits in the car when visiting, with a tag attached, "best wishes from X&Y.

If you are given a gift that you weren't expecting, say "Oh, DH left yours in the car! "

Scuttle out and retrieve item, and present with a smile!

and leave the wrapping paper/gift tags/ribbon etc downstairs/garage etc so as not to have to clamber up the ladders to the loft mid November (unless you have posh loft ladders of course)

me..! I have to treck the ladders in (usually wet through) drag them up stairs, then have to seperate them to make a long ladder \(trying not! to severe fingers at the same time)

Don't buy so much food for the buffet we do here on Boxing night. There are only usually 9 of us and I buy enough to feed an army. We are now trying to plough through it.

This year I made a simple (A4) organiser chart with each of DC and DGC's names and a general title,which I carried around in my bag. As I bought or received online orders I wrote them under the apropriate name and ticked them. When they were wrapped I changed the tick into a W. A bit OCD I know but it saved buying things twice, made sure presents were evenly distributed and avoided tearing paper off to see what I had bought and for whom! It definitely worked!

1. Rest the turkey upside down, so that juices drain into the breast, not out of it. Can't think why I never did this before.

2. (Probably not applicable to everybody!)
Make a note of where I have hidden bags of presents brought by far-flung relatives earlier in December, so I don't go mad looking for a missing bag on 25th and 26th - after dd had put her own stash of presents for son in law's family on top of them in the spare room wardrobe! Where I'd already looked 4 times in an I-must-be-going-mad frenzy.
So they finally turned up yesterday morning, as dd and family were packing up to go to in laws.
Phew!

Make notes before putting everything away of wrapping paper and Christmas card requirements for next year. Better still, get them now while they're going cheap and then don't forget to make a note NOT to buy any next November!

I wrote my Christmas cards at the end of October slowly over a week leaving it all out in the dining room. I did about 8 or 9 a day and enjoyed it so much more than normally. I am often the one doing it all in one evening the day after last day of posting, especially when I was working!

Buy crackers, Xmas cards and plenty of wrapping paper now as half price. Colour code dc gifts so if one goes astray you know who it belongs to. Make a spread sheet to keep tabs if you do as i do and pick up bits through the year. Don't try to host too many at once. We have my ds, sil and dgc and 2 ds weekend before Xmas. Then my dsis, bil and their 4 dc after Xmas on 30th. Much less stressful and 2 days to enjoy.

We cover our decorated Christmas tree (lights included) with a very large plastic sheet and put in the garage. All ready for next year. My grandson, five years old says we are very lazy!!

Label your boxes with Christmas decorations clearly on all four sides and stack them so the things you want early on in December are at the front of the stack.

Unless of course you decorate in one fell swoop, but I am too old for that now.

Christmas tips? Go away on the 23rd, somewhere where they have never heard of Christmas, and don’t come back until the 2nd of January!

And take a large bottle of malt whisky!

Grey, I think you win the prize!

Only 1, Greyduster?