The Independent Store Christmas Gift Guide: 50 For £50 & Under
Christmas is coming and it’s drawing in fast. I am not complaining. I am a BIG Christmas fan, mainly for the home decorating arm of the celebrations which never fails to make me happy. There isn’t much I like doing more than planning out what I’m going to do - Pinterest is my best friend and I’ve been scouring eBay and Etsy for months, collecting bits and pieces with which to deck the hall(s). I always fail dismally to stick to any sort of colour scheme - I have too many old decorations that I cannot bear not to use, resulting in my tree being so stuffed that you can barely see the boughs. I am sure I inherited this excessive bedecking from my mum, who would spend hours filling our family tree before finishing it with copious strands of lametta and angel hair. We still talk about the time that Willy the cat surreptitiously scoffed a piece, only to be discovered when we noticed him prowling the hallway with a long piece of silver tinsel trailing festively out of his bottom. Ah, that pre millennial childhood was one that keeps on giving.
But I digress. Let’s talk about presents - gift wrapping is another one of my Christmas joys. I mentioned yesterday that prior to meeting me, Joe’s favourite way of handing over a present was via the original plastic bag, complete with receipt. This, for me, was tantamount to criminal activity and it’s safe to say he’s never done it since. My go to wrapping is simple - I generally stick to brown paper which I then adorn with anything I can get my hands on, from ribbon or coloured string through to tree decorations, photographs or sprigs of greenery from the garden. My gifting list is always excessive, not assisted by my children (borderline term for 21, 20 and 14 year olds) who STILL insist on receiving Christmas stockings at the end of the bed. New parents - just to warn you, once you have started this tradition it will NEVER, EVER end, not even when they’ve left home, only return every couple of months, go to bed hours later than you and their bedroom is now actually a guest bedroom. When they were small, the stockings were filled with cheap random plastic shite from Poundland that would have them squealing with delight but that we’d be treading on for months; now they are older, I am forced to fill them with practical, usable items such as pants and toiletries that cost about 100,000 times more than the plastic shite so that their stockings end up costing more than their actual main Christmas presents. God help me.
Anyway, back to the point and I’ve been doing Gift Guides that are focused on independent stores rather than High Street for eight years now. I am always so excited to collate them - there are so many beautiful carefully curated online stores that it’s hard to choose which ones to include. Yesterday, I presented you with my favourite buys for £30 and under for this Christmas gifting period, all from independent stores and makers - click the link here to shop. Today, I’ve upped the budget to a whopping £50 and have curated a list of 50 independents who can provide you with a glorious array of goods to fit this spending sector PERFECTLY. So what is the benefit of combining the High Street with shopping smaller this Christmas? As I said last week, by checking out these smaller sellers and independent stores, you are supporting and promoting these businesses and their products which is so very important to the continuation of these individual brands. Every click is a possible sale so please, if you like what you see then PLEASE SHARE! Happy shopping.
