Our Final Pick! Christmas 2016 Advent Calendars for Smix, Me, & for Mrs Meow!

We are so excited for Christmas! These two rascals are sorted for advent calendars, and my choice has just arrived too. So let's have a look at 2016's picks for the World of Kitsch household. 

Duvet from Asda online

Smix picked the Tesco Hot Wheels calendar. I bought it for £15 last week in store, but it appears to be £12 this week on the website.

Behind the doors are 8 cars and the rest of the days are fun Christmas accessories to pair with the vehicles. 

The second calendar is one for us to share, which I won via a competition on the fabulous, local, culinary website Eating Ideas (check them out if you don't know them already).

It's the Hotel Chocolat Truffels for Two calendar, which costs £26 & which has two mini chocolates for each day.

Mrs Meow's calendar is next, and a rarer find than a doggy advent, it's a cat treat calendar from Lidl which cost £4.99 Its pretty hefty though.  The contents look kibbly, and I'm hoping she will eat them, you never know with her.

Last is my own choice, and rather than go for a makeup advent calendar this year I splashed out on the  Sanctuary Let Go Days of Christmas advent. It costs £25 and it's packed with travel size minis of their top products, and home fragrance items too. I buy from the range throughout the year, so I'm looking forward to finding some new favourites.

It's another hefty calendar, but the £25 price tag is softened by the fact it's included in the yearly Boots 3 for 2 Christmas gift offer. So I bought two similarly priced presents for other people and then got the calendar 'free' as it were. Merry Christmas to myself!

So which calendar are you after? The only other one that's tempting me is the £250-worth M&S Beauty calendar, which you can get for £35 when you spend £35 in store on home or clothing. If any of you get that, I will be so envious! 

Football Themed Snacks Score a Goal at Lidl NI

Northern Ireland's first match kicks off in 20 mins. I ran over to  Lidl Bangor quickly to pick up some snacks for during the nail biter.

Good luck, NI! We can do this! 

79p

79p

99p

£1.99

£1.99

Going Potty For Lidl's £2.99 Retro Futuristic Planters

I hadn't been in Lidl in ages, then today I struck lucky and found these £2.99 pots in stock. 

£2.99 pot, 89p Parsley plant

Alternative prints, also pastel versions

I got the set of 2 for £2.99

There were also some cool bowls and servers, I think they were around a fiver. 

It Took Me Two Hours to Put Together Smix's Advent Calendar... Was It Worth It?

As a product blog this is a bit useless, as I bought this in Lidl about a month ago and I think they sold out. Plus I can't even recall the price! Either £5.99 or £6.99? That seems a lot, when they don't come with contents, but even after they've been opened you are left with a very cute Christmas village that can be reused year after year. 

So, this morning I set about building the 24 houses. They are all the same shape, so once you get going you speed up, but it still took me two hours. Perhaps if there are two of you making them, 12 each, it would be faster, but I just stuck Netflix on and got folding. 

You have 24 sheets of housing, which are double sided, so you can alternate, or choose an all brown or all blue themed village. You've also gold stickers for numbering the houses and ribbon. 

As with most of these type of craft builds, you'll find it a lot easier if you pre-bend the folds before you try to fashion it together. 

The houses are a good size. I don't want to give away all the contents, but I was able to fit trinkets from Tiger Stores inside, sweets, small sets of battery powered Christmas lights from Poundland etc. 

They actually take up a lot more room than I anticipated. Only the first ten days fitted on the mantelpiece. I don't think I will keep all of them for displays next year. Probably just a selection of whichever ones don't get ripped to bits with the excitement of getting to the insides! 

Could You Eat Reindeer This Christmas? Share a Lidl Magic

Tonight Michael and I went along to probably the most impressive launch night we've been to, as  Lidl NI showcased their range for Christmas 2015.

They had set up a replica Christmas market inside the Life Church in Belfast. Sparkly lights on Christmas trees and stalls brimming with treats. 

The entertainment came in the form of the Bugle Babes. 

So what can we expect in store? As usual Lidl's deluxe range is out of this world, with oysters, chowder and the finest meats. 

Have you ever made one of these gingerbread houses? I've tried. Never again. So thank goodness Lidl have a ready made one you can buy! 

These little desserts are so cute. One is chocolate orange and it tastes amazing. Good idea as a Christmas dinner dessert, when you're so full of turkey & trimmings that you couldn't squeeze a full size dessert in. 

And here it is, the infamous reindeer meat! Could you try it without feeling like you're chowing down on Rudolph? 

My Mum always does a buffet on Boxing Day, so I'm going to have to bring a pack of this and see what everyone's reaction is! 

I realised I had never tried oysters before. They were tasty. 

So there we have it. A little taster of Lidl Christmas 2015. I'm all in a Christmassy mood now. 

Halloween 2015 at Lidl NI- Pumpkin Print Sausages & Crisps So Hot They Carry a Warning.

Today Lidl NI's Halloween stock for 2015 arrived in store, and this year is bigger than ever. The pumpkin print sausages are back, but this year the food range includes home baking, trick or treat supplies, and even crisps so spicy they come with a warning that they aren't suitable for children!

Here's what we found in the Bangor store, and you can check out the clothing & fancy dress options on  the Lidl NI website.

The Next Playground Craze are Stikeez : Where to Get Them & All You Need to Know

Remember trekking round the pound stores trying to get your hands on a pack of loom bands last summer? Well here is a heads up and how you can get ahead with this winter's new craze. 

I heard of Stickeez during the summer in a Lidl leaflet, but I hadn't seen them in store yet. My son came home from school yesterday asking could we go buy some, as they've started being pulled out of pockets in the playground already. 

 They come in separate packs for 29p and my local Bangor store has a stand of hundreds of bags at the till as of this week.

Even the submarine shaped collector box is only £1.99, but I didn't see it available to buy in my store. 

Each bag has a little plastic fish character that can stick onto a table or window. One of my Instagram followers said their children attached them to their wall and it pulled the paint loose, so it may be worth warning kids of that. 

For 29p it's not a bad craze, I'm going to buy a bag of them and use them as rewards for getting spellings, homeworks and things like that done. And until the end of this week you get a free Stikeez bag with every £10 spent! We can all agree though, that like loom bands, this will be hectic for a few months then we will never see them played with again! Good luck, fellow parents! I'll see you in the aisles of Lidl soon! 

The Big Monday Morning Round-up: Clarins Double Serum, Lidl Fashion, & Drop a Jean Size Challenge Midpoint Check-in

I've follow up news on three different topics I've blogged about before, so I'm combining them in one big Monday morning round-up. 

I blogged a few days ago that I was trying  Clarins Double Serum which is the UK's leading serum product with a string of awards to its name.

Its a unique oil AND water product, and Clarins have found a combination so they work together rather than separating as those elements usually would. You can see the bottle above is split in two, oil on one side, water based serum on the other. When you pump to dispense both come out and you combine them before applying to your face. 

I was given a few samples at the House of Fraser 'Beauty Confidential' event, where you can currently pick up Double Serum for £59, saving £10 on their regular price.

I have tried all my samples, one each night and truthfully I haven't noticed much of a difference from my usual Boots No.7 serum. The Clarins rep said that to really get a good idea of the product you need a week's worth of samples, but by the time I reached that concession after my Laura Mercier makeover, they were almost all gone. So perhaps that's why I didn't notice any different YET, I only had four nights' samples.  

Also I thought the samples themselves were a little small. I realise it's an expensive product, so samples will be costly to give out for free, but I found it tricky to get any of the water based side of the serum out of the sachet at all. 

I do want to give Clarins Double Serum another try though. The lady representing them said they get sample sizes in every few weeks, so I will try to see if I can get a seven day supply of samples when I'm up again. 

I'm keen to visit House of Fraser while the Beauty Confidential offer is still running, as the other product they showed us, Instant Smooth, is also £10 off at only £16.50

This stuff is magical. It was their innovative product they shared with us during the talk that night, and what it can do has to be seen to be believed.  

Rubbing a tiny amount on the palm of your hand, then comparing to your other one, will show you just how effective Instant Smooth is. Wrinkles and lines are filled in and simply disappear. I had never seen anything like it.

Of course the effect is temporary, once you take off your makeup at the end of the day your wrinkles are back- but it's a cheaper and less drastic measure than injected fillers. 

So, who managed to get something wonderful from the range of Lidl Fashion that arrived in stores last Thursday? 

I was thrilled to find the striped t-shirt I had wanted at the press event, at only £5.99 in my local Bangor store. I couldn't find the panelled leather look leggings, but I've a feeling they said those will be in store in November. 

Finally, I'm one week into my drop a jean size challenge. My weight is inching down, and those size 12 jeans are looking more like they will fit every day. In fact I was able to buy size 12 leather-look leggings yesterday in Exhibit.

 The New You site has lots of new bundle offers in time for slimming down for Christmas, if you fancy joining me.