Blogmas 2017 - Day 20: Christmas stockings

I do like the Christmas stocking tradition. As a child Father Christmas always left our stockings in our bedrooms, and my brothers and I would take them into our mum and dad’s bed in the morning to open them together. This was especially nice as my dad has always worked shifts. So, if he wasn’t yet back from his night shift when we woke at the crack of dawn we could open our stockings with mum first, whilst waiting for him to get home, before we’d all go downstairs together.

For her first Christmas I bought Charlotte a stocking from Etsy  - luckily the shop was still running two years on so I could buy Benjamin a matching one. I really struggled to find a nice knitted stocking, and I really wanted a knitted one rather than a fabric one. Not really sure why? Just because that's what I had as a child I suppose!

Our elves, Jack and Holly, deliver our stockings on Christmas Eve

I really don’t go overboard on the stocking contents. I really dislike the idea of buying stuff for the sake of buying stuff (more so as I’ve got older), and filling them with tat that will just end up in the bin days later! I tend to give myself a budget to stick to, and this year I’ve gone for £10 as we were a lot more extravagant with advent calendars than usual. So, the kids have some chocolate coins  (what Christmas stocking is complete without them?), a couple of small toys (one from Poundland, and a Schleich plastic animal each), some pens and pencils and mini notebooks,

Charlotte was also very lucky to receive a "colour your own stocking" from one of my friends as an early Christmas gift. It was opened within about 4 minutes of the postman knocking on the door and she absolutely loved completing it.