Happy New Year! I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year and 2019 is a good one! I can’t believe it’s been a week since Christmas and it’s 2019 already, not sure where 2018 went. I ended up spending the least week recovering so this post is a bit later than I planned but I wanted to post it anyway. I love reading what other people have got for Christmas.
I haven’t tried anything from the brand in the Holland and Barrett beauty advent calendar, I’ve never even heard of them before, but that’s what I love about these beauty advent calendars and why I buy them in the first place. This time a year a revitalising leg gel seems a great idea, especially for anyone working in any of the kinds of jobs that everyone wants in the festive season and there’s a lot of standing around! I’d already seen the Funko Pop character after having to dig in this door for Hedwig yesterday but I’m still happy to have a Neville, at least I think he’s Neville!
I’m sure we were supposed to have had snow at some point this winter, I think it’s the weather that’s making me not feel as Christmassy as normal considering it’s only four days away! This time last year we’d had quite a bit of snow, Google helpfully showed me the photos on the 10th and made me want it even more! Oh well, I hope it stays away for everyone to get home over Christmas but it would have been nice to have had some in December! As I write this it’s pouring with rain and so windy the birds had to make several attempts to land on the feeders.
We finally made our wreath today! It’s a bit late with less than a week to go but I do love how festive it makes the house look. We’ve made wreaths for as long as I can remember but we’ve never used the fir we have this time. We still have the fake tree left to decorate but then all decorations will be done!
The Holland and Barrett advent calendar today had a great gift for how we’ve been feeling lately with some Eucalyptus essential oil, great for when you’ve got a cold. The Harry Potter Funko Pop advent calendar had the second Weasley twin to add to the family.
I am so happy with today’s Funko Pop figure. Dobby is so cute and is pretty much the perfect character for the Pop proportions, he’s almost the right shape anyway without them distorting him as much as other characters. Plus he has his sock! Also loving the fact there’s another lip balm in the Holland and Barrett beauty advent calendar. This time of year I can never have too many of them and I was starting to run out.
In the Funko Pop advent calendar today I added one of the twins to the Weasley clan, I do like how the family is building up. The Holland and Barrett beauty advent calendar is helping increase my essential oils with a base product to add them to. I feel like I need to do some research into this, find out the best combinations, but until then I’ll have fun playing around!
How are we over half way to Christmas in advent? I started wrapping presents today and may have got a bit carried away with it. I always think that Instagram worthy presents look amazing but it would be a waste to buy all the ribbons and things, but then I remembered all of the ribbons I have from various Lush gifts over the years and now my floor may be a mess of ribbons, paper and tape. Also, would it be too much to add spare mini baubles? Asking for a friend 😉
Today in the advent calendars I got a miniature of one of the full sized Funko Pops I own. Maybe it’s just me but I always like mini things and seeing a mini version of a figure I like is always interesting to compare them. The Holland and Barrett beauty advent calendar has a moisturiser from a brand I’ve heard of and been interested in but never actually bought anything from. I’ve been leaving my moisturiser to run out as I always get so much skin care in these things and today it’s moisturiser day, just in time as well.
The house smells of Christmas cooking today. I love making Christmas food and yesterday I made some mincemeat slices, like mince pies but with oats and wholemeal flour rather than standard pastry, and they are so nice but slightly healthier (only slightly). Today we may have ended up going shopping and buying more Christmas cakes. We’ve never really got them before but we got some mini Stollen and Lebkuchen, I think the lebkuchen are some of my favourite Christmas sweet foods. I’m the only one in the family who likes them so we don’t normally get them, but it was a small pack at a good price and they’re being kept till Christmas so I’ll try and be good and not sneak any before then! Do you guys have any favourite Christmas foods?
I felt so organised last week getting all the posts ready and scheduling them and then they didn’t post! At least we’re caught up now and I have a couple of gift set posts I want to do coming up so there will be two posts a few days. I always feel a bit like I’m cheating on the advent calendar when I do these posts in advance, I open them each day and it’s a bit of a treat but then I open three at once to take photos! Do you guys do advent calendars a day at a time or in chunks, or just open them all at once?
Today is the first of the duplicate characters with another Harry Potter, though he is pretty different to the first I would prefer it if they’d thrown in a few others that I know aren’t in here, I won’t spoil it by says who I’d have added yet. But the Holland and Barrett 25 Days of Cleaner Beaut Calendar was great, I’m a huge fan of Dr Organic products, so is my skin, and it’s something from a range I’ve never tried before.
Back home after the weekend and today’s been so busy that it’s not so Christmassy feeling now! I don’t think I’ve done anything all that festive today, I started a course for developing a business to see if I can create a business plan so it’s all been about that so far. It’s exciting lead up to Christmas may not have been the best time to start on this!
I am loving the moisturiser in the Holland and Barrett 25 Days of Cleaner Beauty Advent Calendar, it’s one of the things I was most looking forward to trying, and the Funko Pop Harry Potter Calendar is adding to the Hogwarts staff with a pretty detailed and well done character.
It doesn’t feel like December at the moment, it’s too warm for this time of year, so much for the snow we were supposed to be getting from November.
The advent calendars today had some more goodies, I do love trying new nail varnishes, though I should probably reducing my nail varnish collection rather than adding to it. The Funko Pop figure is the first of the Hogwarts pets. Crookshanks is almost as big as the other figures but still a very cute looking angry cat!
Today was not the best day, I did manage to get things done but only about half of the things on my list of ‘to do’s and that may have been overdoing it as I ended up having to lie down with a cold towel on my head. I’m really hoping I’m not going to be ill, perfect timing in the plead up to Christmas. At least I’ve got pretty much all of my Christmas shopping done and may be starting to wrap presents tomorrow, I don’t have the room for the things in my wardrobe and then I don’t have to hide them any more.
I have to say that I am very excited about both of the gifts in the advent calendars today. The Funko Pocket Pop is one I’ve had my eye on in the full size but it seemed to be sold out when I went to get it. The Holland and Barrett beauty calendar had a face mask in and I do love a good face mask, plus my skin could really do with some TLC as it’s been playing up recently. The tea was surprisingly good too, it wasn’t one I was looking forward to but I did enjoy it.
