Chance to win one of three £100 Lidl vouchers by sharing your Christmas catastrophes and/or tips for a stress-free day...NOW CLOSED

[AngelieMumsnet]

Have you ever had a Christmas catastrophe? Have you burnt the brussels and gift-wrapped the Christmas cake? Or are you in fact a Festive Fairy Godmother, brimming with hints and tips and always on hand to help at this time of year? Please share your worst and best Christmas related moments and festive tips - you could win a Lidl voucher.

Lidl say "With fantastic recipes and tips galore, we want to help you breeze through the festive season, and avoid any disasters along the way. We’d like to know your best festive chaos stories, along with any hints and tips to make things more manageable. We have everything you need to help you get Christmas right; from turkeys and all the trimmings, to sweet treats that are too good to resist, so that you can pull off a flawless Christmas with Lidl without having to blow your budget!"

Everyone who comments below sharing how they got Christmas right (or wrong!) with stories, hints or tips, will be entered into a prize draw where three Mumsnetters will each win £100 worth of Lidl vouchers.

Please note that any comments posted on this thread may be used by Lidl in further marketing material (anonymously, of course)

Thanks and good luck,

MNHQ

My tip is to be orgainsed - but flexible! Not everything will go to plan, so try not to stress over the hiccups throughout the day.

And don't bother cooking every traditional piece of the Christmas dinner just for the sake of it. If nobody particularly likes x component, nobody's going to miss it.

My biggest tip? A LARGE glass of wine tends to do the trick :P

We had a power cut on Christmas morning but luckily I had everything almost ready, Turkey roasted & Stuffing & Gravy made, only the veg to cook, so I got the double camping gas stove out & used the stacker/steamer pan for all the veg & potatoes on one 'hob' & the gravy on the other.
It was a success despite the power cut because it was pre-prepared!
Phew!

Keeping it simple usually works for me, but I think having kids sometimes makes things challenging especially when they want to help which is always a good thing. However, once DS1 bumped into a container that must have had the mixed ingredients of a cake or biscuits and I had to start from scratch? The annoying thing? The second batch didn't turn out as nice as the first one. Grr

The christmas dinner is always a disaster, something always gets burnt or dropped! My tip would be to plan ahead and ask for help when you need it!

Oooh, well the third Christmas after a labradoodle addition to house everything was ready. We had the inlaws down - table was set, massive cauliflower cheese and nut roast ready to keep.vegetarian inlaws happy

Bringing the stuff through to the table, dd left the kitchen door open a touch and the nut roast and cauli cheese didn't last thirty seconds with the mutt around

Oh and the Christmas cake also went down well.with the dog- that dp had been feeding for months! Dog.was v tipsy

Ils had to have sandwiches (cheese) for xmas dinner with a bit of veg. Even roasting had been done in goose fat as they weren't bothered when they had so much else!

prepare as much as you can the previous day, and remember to enjoy yourself a few drinks always help

My Dad said he'd take me out on Christmas Day, he drove us to a nice pub and then announced that he hadn't actually booked, but perhaps they would squeeze us in or do us a bar meal.
I had a packet of crisps and half a lemonade for Christmas dinner.
Yum!
I have just about forgiven him twenty years later :)

I know this wouldn't suit alot of people but we keep it so simple! We don't exchange presents really and we don't have a big turkey Christmas dinner! We have nice easy curry as its our favourite and Christmas is more about our favourite food and drinks, good films or boxsets or books and good fun.

The only catastrophe was quite nice really, we had guests for xmas and there was a power cut just as we were about to start cooking! Luckily we hadn't started yet so we just lit candles everywhere and got the next day's buffet food out of the fridge instead!

Its much more relaxing if you make it up as you go along!

Prep as much food the day before Christmas and or use a buffet style dinner as it's less rushing about for the chef.

The most magical time we had was when our daughter was 3. We had recently moved and had no carpets but we used this as an opportunity and spray snowed around hubbies feet all up the stairs on Christmas Eve. When our daughter woke on Christmas morning she squeeled with delight that naught Santa hadn't wiled his boots.

My friend forgot to take the turkey out of the freezer so rushing she dropped it on her foot & broke it. She spent Christmas Day at A&E ending up in a plaster cast so did not cook dinner anyway.
My tip is to utilise your freezer as most things can be prepared in advance but set your phone alarm to defrost in the correct timeline.

really dont worry and think of the other countries you could have been born in we have already won the ovarian lottery.

Top Tip:
Do as much food prep as you can on Christmas Eve, so you can chill out a bit on Christmas morning and enjoy the opening of the presents with a glass of champagne.

We had roast pork one Christmas, but the crackling wasn't very crispy, so I popped it under the grill whilst we ate our starters. Unfortunately, I forgot about it until the 'dinner bell" (smoke alarm) alerted me to the fact that the kitchen was full of black smoke. Fortunately, the pork was fine, although the crackling was rather charred. The kitchen smelled horrible for a few days though.

My husband decided to surprise me with a kitten for Xmas, unfortunately it was a kitten from the works cat and was not domesticated in any way shape or form. It hid under the sofa and every time someone walked past it would launch itself at their ankles and gnaw like crazy, the kids were terrified, it took several hours and many bites and scratched, to catch the little terror and return it to its mom, when we moved the sofa we found a little package it had left for us, we spent the rest of Xmas day in the kitchen as we could not get rid of the smell, Its one Xmas present I will not for get in a hurry

My tip is to do EXACTLY what you and your immediate family want to do, and make your Christmas EXACTLY the way you want it. Trying to please everyone never works and will just end up stressing you out. This year I have put the aunties, grannies and various cousins on hold for Christmas week and stated me and hubby and child want a snug Christmas at home, doing absolutely nothing, and we will see them all for fun in the New Year. They're not happy, but me hubby and daughter are :-)

My top tip is to make sure all new toys work before wrapping them and have batteries in them!

My top tip is: wrap your pressies as you go, writing the gifts' content on sticky notes..

Keep it simple, planning and preparation. And it is also great to go to someone elses house for christmas dinner!

One Christmas Day after I had carved the turkey, the cat was hovering around, and the dish the turkey was sitting on was so large I couldn't find anywhere to put it safely out of the cat's way. Then I had a brainwave. I had a cooker hood with a flat top, so I popped the turkey on top of it. It wasn't such a good idea after all because the turkey and the big, heavy plate fell down, hitting me on the head. Oh the pain! I saw stars and it really put me off eating my dinner. I'll not make that mistake again.

Never used a microwave but decided to cook the Christmas pudding in my Mum's. Misread the instructions adding the minutes for each power level plus a few extra minutes for luck! Thirteen minutes later I extract the now caramelised pudding send serve it to my 91 year old mother who gamely attempted to crack her way through the brittle, scorched dessert. We still laugh about it at Christmas!

My baby's first Christmas, we decided to eat at home and I very proudly served my lovingly prepared turkey only to find that the giblets were still happily settled inside...I've not been allowed to forget it since - ds1 is nearly 18!

Get someone else to cook Xmas dinner! Failing that do a simple buffet!!

Have your christmas dinner on boxing day when the kids have calmed down a bit and are more likely to eat it = less waste!