What to buy a woman for Christmas

Most women are easy to buy for, but if you are a fairly clueless man left to your own devices, shopping for the woman in your life could be quite a daunting task.

I have put together a few ideas based on a budget of £100.


If you have not received any hints, I think it would be difficult to go wrong with a bottle of Chanel Chance which can be purchased from Boots (or boots.com) for £85.95 for the 100ml eau de parfum. It is a beautiful scent, which I think would appeal to almost everyone.
To reach (and go over by 95p) your £100 budget this grey loose knit snood looks super cosy and will cost you £15 from River Island or riverisland.com.

Another gift that you may want to consider is this set of 3 limited edition Diptyque candles. It is a great gift for a woman who loves her candles and it will set you back £78.00 and is available from Harrods or online at harrods.com.
To make up the gift to £100 most women would love this Urban Decay Naked Basics palette full of neutral every day colours, which is available from Debenhams or debenhams.com for £22.00.

This silver cubic zirconia and synthetic sapphire necklace is gorgeous if you want to blow the majority of the budget all in one. This costs £95 from Beaverbrooks or beaverbrooks.co.uk.
Coming in just under budget this cute pack of two pairs of cosy slipper socks are available at New Look for £3.99.

New Look have some lovely socks out for Christmas. I saw these adorable gingerbread man and candy cane design socks in New Look today. They are only £1.99.

Anyway my final gift idea is this lovely Viktor and Rolf Flowerbomb gift set, which comes with a 50ml bottle of the eau de parfum, a body cream and a shower gel.
It currently costs £73.00 from Boots so I have paired it with these festive Me To You design pyjamas with, 'Feeling Snug' written on the front. They are available from Next for £25.00. There are lots of nice pyjamas on their website. Last year I struggled to find nice pyjamas anywhere and ended up eventually finding a Disney pair in Asda.

Stocking fillers haul for £1.00 or less!!

My sisters and I agreed we wouldn't spend too much on each other this Christmas.
I really enjoy buying for them so I haven't exactly stuck to my word. I have bought them each a perfume, a top, a scarf and some jewellery and I have bought one of my sisters some Lush goodies, which I mentioned in a previous post and the other will be getting a new handbag.

I wanted to get them a few more little treats for them to open and I have found that you can get some fabulous treats for just £1.00!

For chocolates I raided the Poundland for the smallest box of Milk Tray known to man and a box of orange Matchmakers (they also had mint ones).

The Thornton's Classics bags are lovely too without so much unnecessary packaging and they only cost £0.99 from Home Bargains.

Poundland also had Herbal Essences hair masks, which smell amazing. I couldn't resist getting one for myself as well. £1.00 is amazing for a hair mask.

Superdrug are currently selling Impulse for £0.98 for a full size 75ml can. Sweet Smile and Secret Smile are my two favourites so I got them for my sisters to try.

In the other pound shop, Poundworld I picked up a can of Sure deodorant for just £1.00, which I think is great as, in my opinion, it is the best deodorant on the market and you will pay more than double for the same can in Boots!

Finally, Wilkinson's Fruits range had a crowd gathered around it last time I went to Wilkinson's so I took a look for myself and made quite a few purchases.

This is kind of cheating because these products cost £1.50 each, but they are permanently on a 3 for 2 deal so if you buy items in multiples of 3 they are only £1.00 each.
I bought more products than are shown in the photo below, but some were duplicates so I didn't want them to be in the photo twice.

The range have soaps, shower gels, scrubs, bath bombs, hand wash, shampoo, conditioner, bath foam, face masks, body butter, lip balm in their unique flavours.
Their flavours are quite unusual. The photo above shows a passion fruit and melon scrub, a strawberry and pomegranate bath bomb, an orange and pomelo soap and a lime and ginger shower gel.
It is difficult to smell the soap through the plastic wrap, but the shower gels and bath bombs smell amazing. They remind me of bath and shower products from the 90's that my friends and I used to buy for each other's birthdays and for Christmas and they had lovely, fruity, quite obscure scents that you don't find a lot of products in such as dewberry.

There are lots more scents from the Wilkinson's range.
I bought all of the different soaps. There is rhubarb and vanilla (amazing), lemon and black pepper, coconut and vanilla and finally blueberry and grape. I think they all sound amazing and I will definitely be trying this range for myself.
I know my niece will love these fruity products so I have reserved some for her as well.

I would be really pleased with any of these gifts and I think most women would be pretty pleased with them, but I think the hair mask is the greatest gift for the price!


Other items that would be nice to receive in your stocking and cost just £1.00 are these novelty products.
Coca-Cola or J20 flavoured lip balms and Tango shower gels and hand washes are nice little novelty ideas. They can usually be picked up from pound stores.

 I noticed that Claire's are selling Kellogg's Rice Krispies lip balm for £3.00. I think the packaging is really cute for these lip balms.

A while ago I picked up this set of 5 Swizzels branded lip balms in the flavours of Refreshers, Double Lollies, Drumstick, Double Dip and Rainbow Drops!
B&M's website, www.bmstores.co.uk shows that you can get this set at B&M's for £2.99.

Pretty Dresses!

I have seen loads of really nice dresses recently.

I really like this black one from Topshop. I love the cut. It looks lovely on the website, but when I saw it in store I didn't like it as much. It is still nice, but it isn't what I was expecting.
Where it looks like there is a seem at the waist it isn't actually a seem. The material on the top overlaps the waist so it doesn't hang very nicely. There are also cut out sides, which are mostly covered by the overlapping material.

The photo of the model wearing the dress shows that the dress isn't as flattering round the waist as it could be.

I also quite like this black dress from Topshop. It has a flattering shape and I like the twist detail on the front.

I don't usually get too excited over little black dresses, but I love this one from New Look too.

My husband has just bought me this green dress from New Look as part of my Christmas present. I love it. It also comes in navy, which is also gorgeous, but I love the dark green. The cap sleeves are really cute and I love the cherry blossom print.

New Look have so many nice dresses and I love their boots that they have in for the autumn/winter too. The last of my picks from New Look is this patterned sleeveless skater dress.
It comes in red or green and I'm not sure which one I prefer. It looks like a really comfortable dress, yet it is quite smart at the same time.

A website I hardly ever check out these days is boohoo.com. They used to email me, but I seem to have dropped off their mailing list. I got some gorgeous summer dresses on their site last year so I like to have the occasional look on their website to see what they have.

I think velvet can be very hit or miss, but I like this navy velvet dress.

It looks gorgeous on the model.

I also quite liked this printed dress from boohoo.com.

I am trying my best not to find more goodies for the ever-growing wish list, but I'm bound to see loads more gorgeous dresses before Christmas.

Marc Jacobs Daisy Sorbet and Daisy Eau So Fresh Sorbet

Yesterday it was announced that there will be two new fragrances from Marc Jacobs, Daisy Sorbet and Daisy Eau So Fresh Sorbet.

Daisy Sorbet has top notes of pink grapefruit, pear and passion fruit.
The heart notes are wisteria, jasmine and lily of the valley.
The base notes are violet, wood, cedar and musk.
I love the sound of this. I love pear in a fragrance and passion fruit is one of my favourite scents. I find a lot of the Marc Jacobs Daisy scents have a nice woodiness in them too so it will be interesting to see how this one compares to previous releases.

Daisy Eau So Fresh Sorbet has top notes of mandarin, apple blossom and lotus.
The heart notes are magnolia, jasmine and violet.
The base notes are woods and musk.

I have liked all of the fragrances from the Daisy range so far and these two sound rather delightful. I look forward to trying them out.

There is no indication of what date they will be released. They are supposed to be 2014 fragrances, but the last ones they brought out were at the beginning of 2014 so perhaps these two will not be released until 2015.