To try and recreate a Christmas market in my back garden.

[Namechabged]

All I’ve got so far is an extension lead so I can plug a slow cooker and a microwave in outside, and taking £100 out of the cash machine. I’m thinking I sling four bottles of Aldi mulled wine and some sliced oranges in the slow cooker and charging myself £7 deposit for a mug and £6 for a top up, and then mircrowaving some hotdogs and doughnuts and Nutella and charging £6 for them too. I haven’t got any further than that but welcome ideas.

Get your kids to draw something then charge yourself for it or was that only our primary school?

Organise acraffle and make sure you as the organiser win all the prizes.

• a raffle

Thank you, best thread ever, so much more fun than actually going

This reminds me of Jerry the Berry and the Family "Fun Day" on Phoenix Nights!

Arrange a 'car bar' in someone else's parking slot so you can nip out periodically & top up on Home Bargains Whisky without ripping yourself off at your Hot Toddy stall.

Leave a teenage dc in charge of guarding it, with strict instructions to invite all their mates over to 'help'.

Send their head teacher a guest of honour invite for about 2 hours in.

Encourage the assembled teens to welcome her with a cheery chant of 'Mrs Smith's a wanker, nah nah nah nah' before one of them pukes on her shoes.

Bonus point if the puker is young Miss/Master Smith.

Slices of pineapple dipped in thick dark chocolate. Other fruits work but these are my favourite.
A huge vat of creamy garlic mushrooms.
Burn plenty of incense cones for authentic aroma.
Hot dogs should be replace with Bratwurst.
Thick chunks of barbecued pork in bread rolls.
Pea and ham soup.

@CorianderQueen

You need to charge £5 for cheap German baubles goo OP!

And you need special German mustard.

Curry ketchup as well. Reading some of these ideas some people have been to some awful Christmas Markets, try Hamburg and Rothenburg when the world is free again!

Could you dress a large dog up as a reindeer and charge for a picture of yourself straddling it?

@keeprocking

Slices of pineapple dipped in thick dark chocolate. Other fruits work but these are my favourite. A huge vat of creamy garlic mushrooms. Burn plenty of incense cones for authentic aroma. Hot dogs should be replace with Bratwurst. Thick chunks of barbecued pork in bread rolls. Pea and ham soup.

Yes! Have a billboard at the entrance featuring all of these. Big glossy pictures. For your actual food, though, you need:

Flumps on a stick drizzled with a petri dish of warm melted milk chocolate. £9, or £20 for two.
Huge vat with small puddle of mushrooms at bottom. Everyone steering clear till they can offload it and make fresh.
Burn plenty of money for authentic aroma.
Hot dogs should be replaced with cold dogs.
Small chunks of connective tissue in sugar and brown.
What's that in the tureen? They can't hear you. You'll only find out if you point at it.

Brilliant!

@keeprocking

Slices of pineapple dipped in thick dark chocolate. Other fruits work but these are my favourite. A huge vat of creamy garlic mushrooms. Burn plenty of incense cones for authentic aroma. Hot dogs should be replace with Bratwurst. Thick chunks of barbecued pork in bread rolls. Pea and ham soup.

[hmmm]

I think you're missing the point of this, that sounds too nice. Like the Christmas market we went to in Budapest. Ham hocks cooking on cast iron stoves ... mmm.

That sounds more like the English one @JesusInTheCabbageVan

@Henio

Could you dress a large dog up as a reindeer and charge for a picture of yourself straddling it?

Make sure the poor dog looks really depressed. I remember queueing for a grotto once at there was a really miserable looking reindeer. Combined with standing in the drizzle, it did rather kill my xmas spirit.

If we are recommending xmas markets, then Prague is awesome! It's big, so not too crowded and the mulled wine is cheap and strong. Also, you can't get more xmassy than walking around Wenceslas Square with a dusting of snow.

You need to cut some branches into sections so you can glue together to make a snowman draw a face on it and wrap an old ribbon around its neck and charge £15 and then join two longer bits with some twigs to make a reindeer and draw a face and charge £25 and you have some festive outdoor decorations at a reasonable price 😊

You could tie your shoelaces together to make sure you do the market shuffle and keep to the appropriate pace.

Wait outside in the road for an hour before you go in, maybe get DH to drive you there first, pretend random roads are closed so you can argue about alternative routes and the best place to park and walk uphill for a few miles before you get to go in.

This sounds like it’s going to be expensive 🤣

Can you stick googly eyes and a red bow to a pinecone and sell them for 20 quid each as well. Offer to personalise them for an extra tenner and then write on names incorrectly with a marker pen

Dig a hole - roughly 2m by 2m
Fill with water and let freeze
Charge 10 pounds for 15 minutes on the ice skating rink.
Make sure you only have shoes in a size 3 or a size 13
Also make sure you have at least 200 people crowded on at the same time

Oh I like the tied shoelaces idea and the branch offcuts 😂

Presently digging a hole for a shit ice rink BRB

I bought some baklava earlier and thought of this thread. I'm going to cut it into small bits and sell it by weight, so 2 nibbles will set you back £20.

Collect a load of old bottles from the recycling box. Print off a selection of novel whisky labels (you can involve the DC in this activity). Anything arty, involving hebridean islands should do well, "Jura Snow and Ice", or "Islay whore", that kind of thing.
Fill with Lidl whisky and sell for £89.99.
Or you can do tasting shots for £8.99 each.

We've had a few nominations for this thread to go into Classics so we'll be moving it there now. If you could all pay the Christmas Classics fee (£10 plus £40 parking) on your way in, that would be great.

Merry Christmas!

Ah great nomination for classics but I forgot to book 8 weeks in advance for an ice rink slot

Make sure there's absolutely nothing available in the line of food or drinks for people with any kind of food intolerance or allergy. Ask yourself if the food/drink is free from allergen of choice, then stand to the side and wait for an extraordinary length of time before informing yourself there's absolutely nothing your child can have. Repeat at several stalls.

I will bring my German DH, he can walk round tutting and being teutonically offended at the badly done cultural appropriation