Choosing Christmas Presents for Partners

How do you organise Christmas presents for your significant other and yourself? For us the focus has always been on the kids for present buying and when it comes to each other we’ve either split whatever is left in the Xmas budget between us to spend on what we will (for example I bought new curtains, cushions and accessories for the lounge one year and Roy bought a fancy monitor thingy for his PC).

A few years ago we decided to just tell each other what we wanted and then let that person go out, buy it and wrap it. Since I really fancy women’s watches, I decided to go for something that is both stylish and functional. Not very spontaneous but at least I haven’t yet been bought a Playstation for Christmas instead of something I really would like

THIS year we have gone completely barmy and have set up Amazon wishlists for ourselves and have been adding things as we go along. The idea is that throughout the year each of us adds items we find and like. This way we know we will get some of the things we really fancy but not which ones. Of course we don’t have to buy from there as shopping around for deals and slightly different versions or extras are part of the fun.

My wishlist at the moment had Roy in stitches but didn’t exactly surprise him.

There is a bright pink ceramic pig moneybox, a lovely dotty oven glove set, lots of pencils, pens, highlighters and an obscene amount of different coloured and shaped post-it notes. I have a couple of books and DVDs in there, a vegetable spiralizer, a wireless remote key finder (sick of losing my keys!), a watch, some Command adhesive hooks and more.

This might sound like an odd list but they are all things I will use, love and enjoy. This sort of system works really well because instead of writing “a watch” on a list Roy can see what style of women’s watches I would choose for myself. He is very much into D&D, the roleplaying game and we host a group here twice a month. I know and understand D&D and have even played once or twice in the past but “some D&D books” would snooker me! We get what we know we will like or a variation of it and all is good.

How do you work out what to buy your partner for Christmas? Do you have a system like ours or are you more spontaneous? I’d love to know!

 Christmas