Category: News from UK Christmas Store

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Advent Calendar Sale!

30% off selected advent calendars
It’s not often I authorise a sale, mainly because we keep our prices as low as possible anyway.  However, I have a plan to swap the office and the stock area round, so that the office becomes a stock room and our office sits in the dining room instead.  I think a desk will be much nicer than a stack of plastic tubs anyway.

This is great news for our customers who are still looking for long lasting, reusable advent calendars, as they now have 30% off!  This ends on 30TH November 2023 though, so head over and buy before they sell out.

Cari

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Christmas decorations for adults

If you don’t have young children to make Christmas special for, you can choose more delicate or ornamental pieces for your festive home.  We have some lovely wooden houses and churches, plus nutcrackers and glass decorations galore.

Tree decor ranges in glass, from mini baubles to our larger elipse bauble, really catch the twinkling tree lights, plus you can coordinate with our small glass angels and cupcake decorations.

How do you decorate your home?  Do you still go full on festive or opt for a more subtle, understated Christmas vibe?

Cari

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Christmas decorations for children

I know Christmas isn’t only for the children, but let’s face it, the excitement in the eyes of a child is what a lot of us think of at this time of year.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share some of our Christmas decor for kids, starting with our countdowns.

If you are awaiting a visit from an elf on the shelf, this sign is a perfect addition to your child’s room.

Of course, you don’t want Santa to miss your house, so we also have Santa stop here signs.

If your children have their own Christmas trees, or help to decorate the main tree, we have some fun decorations they will love.

Of course we also have some lovely mini snowglobes perfect for those more careful children.

Lastly, these nesting ‘dolls’ are great festive toys in either snowman or nativity theme.

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Wooden train scenes and glass baubles

Three Christmas Markets in and we have some clear best sellers.  In fact, the wooden train scenes have been so popular that we have ordered more and they are arriving soon.  They are back on the website so you can grab yours now and we will send them as soon as we can.

The range of glass baubles are selling well too so we have ordered more, including some new designs, I hope you like them.  The new drop style I think are lovely so I’m hoping our customers love them too.

We always listen to feedback and we recently had a request for a dinosaur bauble – what do you think?  If they will sell we will do our best to buy some.

Two more Christmas fairs next weekend, both first time events for us, so no idea how busy they will be.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Cari xx

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Our favourite Christmas Fairs

Do you like visiting Christmas Fairs?

I’ve always enjoyed the atmosphere, even before we started having a stall.  The colours, the twinkly lights, the smells from the food stalls and the sound of excited shoppers finding the perfect gift.

Here’s our top picks for Christmas Markets –

1 Gisborough Hall Hotel – we’ve been attending since it started and have many a tale to tell from our visits over the years.  There is always a queue to get in, so our advice is to wait until later in the day if you don’t want to wait.

2. The Bowes Museum – open over three days, it’s a bit expensive to get in but that includes entry to the museum too, where there are lots of exhibits including the silver swan.  Friday is quieter than the weekend but it’s a lovely festive affair with stalls inside and out.

3. Beamish Hall Hotel – while we no longer exhibit at this event, it’s still well worth a visit, with three rooms full of stalls and an outside marquee on the last occasion we were there.

Well, that’s our choices, what would yours be?  Next year we hope to add Wynyard Hall to our list, and of course there are the popular Living North fairs at Newcastle and York racecourse.  Are there little gems we haven’t heard of?

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Christmas officially starts today!

Transport themed wooden Christmas countdown.

…well, for me anyway.

The first day of November usually heralds the start of our Christmas shop events here in the UK.  We attend markets and festive Fayres across North Yorkshire and County Durham each year, with some markets a firm fixture in the calendar.

It also brings all the online Christmas shoppers out, with our website having its busiest month of the year.  This is something we are working hard to increase but being found amongst all the other online Christmas shops is quite hard.

A friend of mine visited a large garden centre recently and made a short video of it.  I got quite envious of all the space to create lovely displays of Christmas decorations and ornaments.  It’s long been a dream of mine to have a warehouse space to turn into a Christmas experience with a shopping facility too – I describe it as a cross between IKEA and Argos!  There would be large displays where you could scan the items you want to buy, then once you had finished we would have all the items ready for you to take home.

Anyway, back to this year.  The stock is still a disorganised stack of tubs – isn’t there always something more urgent to get done?  No, I’m not putting it off, I love everything about my business, it’s just, well, life, you know?  It will be done before I’m back at my day job.

Transport themed wooden Christmas countdown. So, the countdown to Christmas has officially started.  The next few weeks will be a whirlwind, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Cari xx

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Halloween makes me think of Christmas

Hear me out on this one!

Today, the first proper day of half term, has been all about Halloween prep.

I honestly thought by the time my children reached their late teens they would be past all the excitement for Halloween, but my youngest has inherited my love of the magic of these events for the younger members of our community.  This means we still decorate the house, we still carve pumpkins and we still spend a ridiculous amount on confectionery to hand out.

We both love seeing all the costumes, hearing the excited chatter of the children and feel grateful that we can still make this event special for others.

I guess this is why we started our family business.  Christmas is such a magical time for younger children and their families.  From visits to see Santa, to houses all lit up, and the smell of mulled wine and Christmas cake – it’s a special time of year when goodwill and kindness prevails.  Finding those special long lasting decorations for your home and tree is our goal, and every year I turn back the clock, becoming an excited child as I start to plan my ordering for the next season.

Decorating the house for Halloween is almost a trial run for Christmas to me.  There are lights, bunting and ornaments to find the perfect spot for, and once the day is done we can turn our attention to the tree and festivities of Christmas.

This year I want to have a proper hot chocolate station so if you have any suggestions please do comment below.

Cari xx

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Snowglobes, sparkle and Christmas Markets

I still don’t feel ready.

Our first market of the Christmas season is next weekend and the stock is packed and ready to load.

Our larger snowglobes will be staying at home for this one, but we will be taking them to Gisborough Hall and Bowes this year as I know we disappointed some customers in 2022 by leaving them behind.  We will take our smaller snowglobes however, with the new tea cup and gingerbread snowglobes perfect for older children looking to start their Christmas Snowglobe collection.

If you don’t like snowglobes we have plenty of sparkle in our glass tree decorations, and there are still a few snowman on a stand decorations too.  Quite a few decorations are low in stock now so please snap up anything you have been thinking of treating yourself to.

Cari

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Something for the children at Christmas

Christmas is all about spending time with those you love, and certainly children help to keep the magic of Christmas alive.  From Elf on the Shelf to the excitement for Father Christmas himself, shops have lots of decorations aimed at those young at heart.


A lot of our younger Christmas shop fans are crazy about tractors (living in a rural area of North Yorkshire).  We have these tractors in a variety of colours ready to hang on your Christmas tree.

We also have lots of Father Christmas decorations, our favourite being this naughty or nice spinning sign.

This year we have also added more novelty Christmas decorations, with a cow tree decoration expanding the rural theme and these cute mini Snowglobe tea cups.

How do you make Christmas special for the children in your family?  Do you have elves visiting, or leave snowy bootprints across the floor?  Our sister website Cari’s Cards has Christmas advents, fake snow and more.  Please share how you build up to the big day.

Cari xx

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The day we were on The Hotel Inspector – sort of…

I’ve always enjoyed watching programmes like The Hotel Inspector, even though I’m not in that industry.  We did at one stage consider opening a B & B and I guess it’s still one of those ideas that lurks in the background, trying to distract you from everything else you are doing.

Anyway, to ‘scratch that itch’ we watch the fabulous Alex share her years of experience and advice with struggling hoteliers.  Some of the changes seem like no brainers as a viewer, but others are inspiring and encourage me to push myself beyond my boundaries.  With the new series starting in Redcar, a place I know very well from my childhood, we sat down to watch with interest.

Claire, a lovely novice to the world of hotels, was struggling to finish the renovations on a former bank that she was converting into a vibrant bar and six bedroom hotel.  As with most projects, the money had run out and her focus had been on less important work rather than getting the rooms finished.  Aren’t we all distracted by shiny things?

Anyway, part way through (in some of the B roll shots) I spotted something familiar.  She had, on a rather ornate stand, one of our ‘Love and a dog’ blocks behind the bar.  Is it wrong that I felt a little star struck?  Later on it was shown again.  I created a little montage this morning which is on our socials, I just couldn’t let this small bit of ‘fame’ go unrecorded.

Ok, I’ll get back down to earth now.  We can’t even be certain she bought it from us, however it’s highly likely she (or someone in her family) visited Gisborough Hall last year and snapped it up.

If you’re not a dog person, we have a cat version too.

Cari xx