Festive fare in the form of food and drink has been courtesy of Sainsbury. Excellent service – but they use too many plastic bags. Have considered posting them all to head office in an envelope made of their plastic bags! The co-op has just started using 100% compostable bags – would be great if the others followed suit.

New cooker in which to boil, broil, roast and baste said fare courtesy of curry’s online service. Excellent integrated text messaging to tell me when the delivery guys would be arriving and two friendly lads to install it whilst chatting to my baby.

Many Prezzies courtesy of the best of the best – Amazon.co.uk. I swear that all of Santa’s elves have been relocated to work for this wonderful behemoth. The DVD’s and books I ordered on Thursday afternoon arrived at 8am Friday morning. The squash racquet and pillowcases shortly after. Was completely flabbergasted. Why can’t the country be run by Amazon? Only problem is that there helpful recommendations are TOO helpful and I end up spending a small fortune.

Festive (and slightly larger sized due to post baby blubber) clothing was provided courtesy of Debenhams and new look. Both provided excellent quality images, sizing and product information. In addition, returns could be handled in store or (in the case of Debenhams) returned by calling up the courier or sending via free post with a label you printed off the internet. Soooo much easier than negotiating crowded, overheated shops full of piped in Xmas music. Also try finding an accessible toilet in central London with a screaming baby. Surprised that more new mums aren’t caught going postal around this time. Baby brains must keep us all docile.

Goodwill was spread by means of Oxfam unwrapped where I bought rainwater collection units and helped to educate young girls in Africa. I also located the prezzie I wanted from my boyfriend; a limited edition print of a little boy in India drawn by Jamie Hewlett of Hewligan’s Haircut and Gorillaz fame! Yes! It’s mine all mine now! Hahahaha! Happy times.

Grandmas and grandpas will be melted by bootsphoto.com where we made cute pix of baby Aidan and plonked them on rather nice mugs. Also our friends were treated to a photo collage of some of Aiden sillier looks in their Xmas cards – hopefully this will distract them from the fact that we didn’t buy them actual prezzies!

Even Argos got a look in supplying Xmas lights, a new toilet seat (Xmas wouldn’t have been much fun without one of them) and various sundries for the house.

Now we can kick back, enjoy going to the Nutcracker suit (tickets bought online), watching Avatar (tickets reserved online) and even watching the new sci fi Moon (downloaded from iTunes) whilst getting fat, staying warm and enjoying each other’s company. I only hope that all your Xmas’ are as happy!

Provided the grandmothers we ordered (one from Wales, one from Ireland) show up, I think we will have the merriest Xmas yet.

Happy Xmas all!

Samantha