Five under £5 for December 2016 – #fiveunder5

Five under £5 this month can only mean one thing – festive five under a fiver! I love the challenge of finding these things that are little joy-givers on a budget, but I reckon this month will see a bit of competition going on between some of the regular and committed five under five gals, Hayley from Home and Let’s Talk Beauty!

I can’t wait to see what they and everyone else have picked for December, but reading their posts may need to come with a warning as it usually leads to mini shopping sprees. How about that for #stockingfillerproblems?

The first thing I bought in include this month nearly didn’t make it to the photography stage as Sam has been trying to eat it all week. This peanut butter chocolate form Nom Nom is handmade in a cow shed in Llanboidy, west Wales, and sounds like it might be a new favourite. It’s dark chocolate with peanut butter and sea salt – sounds like a home-grown and very delicious massive Reese’s, doesn’t it? I bought it from Wildwood deli for £3.95.

This golden La La La hanger was £5 from Anthropologie, which I’ve been spending a lot of time in since it opened a store in Victoria Gate, Leeds. It made me laugh as Roger was from Liverpool and one of his friends, Simon, who read his eulogy, used to call him ‘La’. I’ll look at this on my tree and smile.

I know it’s a bit early for crackers but we haven’t been able to stop ourselves from pulling a few of these from Booths. They were £5 for a box of 10, but I really love the nutcracker design – and one of them came with a fortune telling fish, which is the ultimate cracker gift, don’t you think?

There’s a new shop which has opened in Ilkley called Fig and Willow, and I popped in there for a look round with Flo the other day. We left with a few bits including this sweet fairy dust tree decoration bottle, which was £1.99 by Sass and Belle.

For your £5 this month you can do something good – you can sponsor a light on Oxford Street by buying a light in the NSPCC Little Stars campaign. I was so touched when one of my best friends Rachel bought three lights for Roger, Sam and Flo and emailed me a little video of them twinkling in the sky. 

We always say daddy is the brightest star in the sky, so it was just thinking there was one twinkling for him over London’s shoppers. The NSPCC says by sponsoring a light we can help keep children safe this Christmas, as each donation goes towards the cost of running Childline.

The little star pin badges like this one are on sale in Matalan for £1 donation, as another way of helping a child at risk from abuse. 

So these are my five things under £5 for December – if you’d like to join in, either in a blog post or photograph on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, please feel free to add your link below. That way we can all see each other’s top picks. If you could comment on a few that would be lovely – and don’t forget to use #fiveunder5 so I can find you! 

X Julia