Slow & Simple Christmas Holidays

Budget friendly Christmas half term ideas

Christmas time can be ridiculously expensive if you allow it, and so I’m on a mission to enjoy the festivities without the hefty price tag. I still want to get into the Christmas spirit, but I don’t want to add to my outstanding debt. Is that too much to ask?

A quick scroll on Instagram reveals the truth, and soon comparison and feelings of not doing/ being enough creep in. The thing about comparison though, is that not only is it the thief of joy, but (going back to GCSE science for a minute) it needs to be a fair test.

You can’t compare yourself with someone who earns double your salary, or has received these wonderfully extravagant Christmas gifts for free due to being an influencer. The people that I’m comparing myself to on Instagram don’t have the same circumstances that I do, and so it’s not a fair test.

As a family, we really don’t like to go to busy places, and at Christmas time, it seems that everywhere is full of people rushing around. So, below I’ve listed a few of our favourite activities to do as a family that aren’t going to be overwhelming on the senses.

Winter walks

We love exploring at weekends anyway, but as the nights draw in and the frost settles, our winter walks become even more special. There’s nothing better than getting wrapped up warm and heading out to investigate the local forest.

We’re lucky enough to live in a beautiful part of the Yorkshire countryside, and so we only have to walk to the end of our street to be greeted with ducks skating on the frozen lake, a frosty forest and beautiful nature trails.

Sledging & building a snowman

The UK is known for being cold, but it’s not often that we have snow deep enough to enjoy. When it does snow properly though, we grab our sledges and head to the local hills and fields to have fun and build snowmen.

These moments come very rarely, so when they do happen, drop everything and go and have some fun. The cleaning can wait, dinner can wait, WORK can wait. Children are only small for such a short time, get out there and make memories with them.

Make hot chocolates/ hot chocolate spoons

Winter is the BEST time to indulge in a hot chocolate drink topped with marshmallows and cream. Even better if you’ve just returned home from the cold and sip a hot chocolate by the fire to warm up.

I saw a Reel on Instagram by @carasuthers where she made hot chocolate spoons that I’m desperate to try with the children at the weekend. It looks so easy, but so amazing! Watch the Reel HERE.

Decorate a gingerbread house

Ok, so I’ll be honest and say that we tried this activity last weekend and failed miserably. We bought a gingerbread set from Ikea and got stuck in to making it. But, that’s just it, it didn’t stick. We could not get the pieces to stick together to form a house no matter what we tried. If you try this activity, maybe use a different gingerbread house kit to the one we did.

In the end, after lots of laughing at our houses falling to pieces, we decided to just decorate each piece of house as its own individual biscuit. This was so much better! We spent ages decorating each piece with different coloured icing sugar, and topping them off with decorative snowflakes and chocolate treats. They were so good in fact, that I don’t have any photographic evidence of them because we scoffed them all!

Decorate a Christmas tree

If you haven’t decorated your Christmas tree yet, now is the perfect time to do it. Whether you have a real or artificial tree, decorating it with your family is a tradition that your children will remember for years to come.

We like to decorate our Christmas tree, and then lay on the floor and stick our heads underneath it (to look up inside of the tree) to see all of the pretty lights reflecting on the baubles. It may be small, but every year the children ALWAYS ask if it’s time to stick our heads under the tree yet, and I love that!

Watch Christmas movies

Home Alone 2 is the ultimate Christmas film, and I won’t hear otherwise. Ok, I will. I’d love to know your favourite festive film. It’s become a sort of non intentional tradition for us to watch the same 3 movies on the run up to Christmas, but I love it.

We plan on watching Home Alone 2, The Grinch, and Elf over the next few days to really get us in the spirit. We’ll gather blankets, light candles, switch all the fairy lights on, light the fire, grab some sweet treats, and pour ourselves a hot chocolate before snuggling up to watch them. Fingers crossed it’s super cold outside to really set the mood.

Look at the Christmas lights

One of my Instagram followers (@sarahtwinsandcharlie) commented that this was one of her favourite free activities to do with her children. She wrote: “Every night we go for a dog walk round the houses after 4pm and look at all the Christmas lights. Can see the same over and over but they love it!”.

How cute is that? I remember when my children were smaller and we’d walk the dogs around the village and take in all of the Christmas lights. It’d take us hours to get around, but they absolutely loved it. A completely free, but incredibly fun Christmas activity to enjoy one evening!

There’s also a ‘famous’ street nearby who go all out with their Christmas lights each year, raising lots of money for charity in the process. Families travel for miles to look at the lights on the street, and the residents really do put on such a wonderful experience, all for free (or a donation to charity). These types of events have become popular in many villages, so it’s worth searching on Facebook to see if there’s a ‘festive street’ nearby to you too.

Write Christmas cards

Writing Christmas cards can be such fun too! We pop on some classic Christmas songs and write away. Then, once we’re done, we get wrapped up warm and head out to post the cards to our neighbours.

The children always design their own Christmas cards at school which we order each year. These cards are sent to our close family as treasured keepsakes, and I always keep one of each in my memory box to look back on in the future.

My two enjoy writing cards for their school friends, and love posting them in the school post box ready to be given out on the last day of term. My daughter hates her name being spelled incorrectly, so I always ask school for a list of first names of pupils in each class so we don’t get them wrong.

Make cornflake/ rice crispie buns

I’m absolutely terrible at baking (see my point about building a gingerbread house), and so I always choose the easy option of making cornflake/ rice crispie buns instead. It’s super simple that even I can’t get it wrong. The kids can pretty much do everything themselves too, and then we just need to decorate them for Christmas.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Cooking chocolate

• Rice crispies or cornflakes (I prefer cornflakes, my husband likes rice crispies, but any dry cereal will do)

• Some sweet treats to decorate

Method:

• Break up and melt the cooking chocolate over a pan

• Once completely melted, pour into a bowl and add cornflakes/ rice crispies

• Stir until the cornflakes are completely covered with chocolate

• Add the chocolate covered cereal to muffin cases

• Decorate with sweet treats before the chocolate sets

• Allow to set for a few hours

• Enjoy!

If you can bake, and enjoy doing so, then maybe some proper Christmas buns or cookies would suit you better. These work great for us though, as they’re super simple to make but also super cheap!

Sort out toys and donate to charity

Having a good sort out before Christmas is a fantastic opportunity to clear some space before the influx of new presents.

I always explain to my two that there are children who won’t be as lucky as them this year, and who won’t get a lot of toys. Therefore, if we can give away some of our toys/ belongings that we don’t need anymore, we might make someone’s Christmas a little bit special. This always does the trick, and they’re more than happy to part with their old/ outgrown toys.

Jigsaws/ games night

As a family, we love playing games together. This year, especially now that the kids are older, I really want to buy some Christmassy jigsaws to do together. I saw a post on Instagram (I can’t remember the name of the account, I’m sorry!) where the family would spend time putting together a jigsaw, and then frame it and use it as a piece of Christmas decor for years to come.

I’m going to search in some Charity shops this weekend and see if I can find any for cheap. If not, I’m definitely going to look online for some festive ones. If you have any recommendations for Christmas puzzles, please let me know.

Sleep under the Christmas tree

How cool would it be to bring your mattresses downstairs and have a sleepover next to the Christmas tree? My two would love that! I’m thinking of combining our festive film night (or game night) with this too to make it super special. Christmas PJ’s would be essential also!

Just think how special it would be to turn all the lights off, apart from the twinkly fairy lights on the tree, and tell Christmas stories. You could even ask your children what their favourite time of the year was, or what made them happy this year. It’s a good way to spend quality time together whilst making memories, and reflecting on the year.

Make your own decorations

I saw a wonderful Reel on Instagram recently about making star decorations from old books, and I really want to try it. Watch the Reel HERE.

I suppose you could make decorations from anything, including old wrapping paper, or even get the children to colour and cut out some Christmassy decorations of their own. I remember as a kid my mum would hang those foil decorations from each corner of the ceiling to the ‘big light’ in the middle of the room, do you remember those? Well these DIY decorations could be like that! Hang them from some string and sellotape them from the ceiling when you’re done.

Visit Santa

My children’s school had a visit from Father Christmas at their Christmas light switch on evening, and it was brilliant! I think it cost around £5 for both of them to meet Santa, and they both received a selection box and a chocolate treat with that too.

You can check/ ask on your local village Facebook group to see if there’s anywhere that you can take your children to meet Santa that won’t cost the earth.

Santa tracker on Christmas Eve

Don’t forget to track Santa on Christmas Eve! Sky Q have a feature where if you press the voice button on the remote and say ‘where’s Santa?’ on Christmas Eve, a tracker will appear and it’ll show you where about’s Santa is in the world at that moment and how many presents he’s delivered. My two absolutely love this, and it really does build excitement.

I’m sure there’ll be other apps or trackers that you can use/ download too, so definitely search around if you don’t have Sky.

I hope you found this useful. I’d love to know your thoughts on these ideas, and let me know if you have any ideas of your own for low cost/ free activities to enjoy as a family this Christmas season.

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