Arggghh! That is how I feel today. I have about a million and one things to do for Christmas and not enough time to do them in. It doesn't help of course that when I sit down for a cup of tea for 10 minutes I always get engrossed in a Twitter debate or looking at Facebook and that 10 minutes mysteriously stretches to an hour. It's actually no wonder I can never get organised.
Anyway in order to make myself feel calmer about Christmas planning I decided to try and write down 10 timesaving tips and I though I would share them with you too!
1. Get a tinfoil tray
This is not particularly glamarous but is very useful. I love Christmas dinner but hate the mess and clearing up afterwards so I was quite excited to discover you can buy large disposable tinfoil trays that you can fit a turkey in and ones that you can use for veggies too. They are cheap and make life a lot easier as you can just throw them in the bin instead of having to wash them up.
2. Use giftbags instead of wrapping
I really really really hate wrapping presents. I'm no good at it. I always loose the end of the sellotape and end up with about 25 odd shaped leftover bits of paper that no matter how hard I try I can never seem to use up. So last year I came up with the idea of putting all the presents into a gift bag - hiding them amongst some scrunched up tissue paper with a bit of Christmas confetti and some golden coins. They were really effective and the children loved them. Best of all they took me about 10 minutes to put together.
3. Use your freezer
I have to say before I started cooking Christmas dinners I never realised how much of the meal can be cooked in advance and frozen. Bread sauce, roast parsnips, roast potatoes, stuffing mix, mince pies - these can all be made a couple of weeks in advance and then brought out to defrost the night before to be heated up on the day. I did this last year and it saved me loads of time and hassle.
4. Use your slow cooker
I have written before about how my slow cooker makes me feel wonderfully smug. It can be there busily doing all the work whilst you are hopefully swigging champagne and gorging on truffles/your children's haribo (delete as appropriate). If you are not having turkey for Christmas or want ideas for a Christmas Eve or Boxing Day meal then gammon can be done in the slow cooker with either some cider or some full fat coke. We tried this a few weeks ago and it tastes lovely and there is absolutely no work involved whatsoever.
5. Shop online
This is a massive time saver and a great stress reliever. No more getting battered by old lady's rushing past you to get the last of the sprouts. No more frantic bargaining with children to get them to actually stay in the trolley instead of doing kamikaze style dives over the side. If you have been organised already you may have got an online delivery slot but if not them don't worry as many of them large supermarkets do click and collect so you can order online and then just pick up from the store.
So I'm going to do all of the above, thereby saving myself lots of time which I am going to use productively by...um....going on twitter and facebook of course!
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