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

Pretty sure my Christmas catastrophe is going to happen this year, oven and hobs not working and the land lord dragging their feet replacing. Meant to be catering for the in laws, eek!

If, after much trial and error, you discover the best recepticle for watering your Christmas tree (ie one that when you have crawled under the tree without dislodging any baubles or creating a rain of needles down the back of your top, actually gets water IN the fucking Christmas tree holder and doesn't just pour water all over the fucking carpet) is a milk bottle, make very very sure that you do not become distracted during the critical moment of filling up an empty milk bottle with water with which to water the tree whilst simultaneously organising breakfast.

Christmas trees do not like milk.

The smell of pine tree does not cover the smell of rancid milk.

It is a task quite beyond even the most patient and determined of people to empty a Christmas tree holder of milk with a fully decorated tree residing within.

13 for dinner ... 12 plates ... had to serve 1 person in a bowl with bits stolen off everyone else ...

tip? Count!

no major disasters here, but a couple of minor ones:-

If you decide to steam your christmas pudding rather than microwave it, don't forget to keep the water topped up. (bit of a burned melted plastic disaster, luckily I had a spare pudding which I microwaved)

If you go away for christmas, make sure you remember ALL the presents. Including the tricycle you were hiding in the garage because it was too bulky to go in the house. Luckily the 18 month old didn't notice the absence of a main present, and wasn't curious why Santa might have delivered one to our house by mistake.

If you have an 8 year old who is REALLY REALLY excited about the whole Santa thing, best not to let them have 3 serving of trifle at tea time. (If you don't want to be up all night clearing up puke).

We also had some power cuts one year when we were at the in laws. Luckily it was after we had served lunch, and we ended up playing trivial persuit by candle light.

Main top tip - spend Christmas with people whose company you enjoy, and won't mind if everything isn't perfect.

Tops tips are

1. become a snazzy sprout refusenik. No one CARES about snazzy sprouts on Christmas Day, seriously, no one. Nude sprouts are the way forward.

2. Don't do a starter. Dear Lord, you are about to eat enough food to hit your recommended calorie intake for the next three days, just leave the bloody prawn cocktail ffs. Leave it.

3. do you really need seven cheeses on the cheese board mother ? No. Three cheeses is quite sufficient. One needs to be cheddar, NICE cheddar.

Had flu, so DH had to cook, with 3 kids under 7 running around, and a dog - recipe for disaster. Roast potatoes were very soggy that year (he's since learnt how to cook them!)

And this one from my grandmother. Check for absent hyphens in Christmas pudding instructions. I deeply respect your commitment to the pudding by steaming it for 46 hours, but seriously, if you have to actually get up out of bed to attend to cooking the bastard did you not ever think to question that perhaps something was a little odd about what was printed on the label?

Not my story I'm afraid but great aunt and uncles. Sat at dinner table with full spread - all the trimmings. Their children and grandchildren were also there. A chair was needed at the other side of the table so one of their grown up children passed a chair across the table but unfortunately caught the glass light shade above the table. Cue shards of glass covering everyone's Christmas dinner.

Worst Christmas we had, it sounds unbelievable. First dd was to ill to open presents from tonsillitis, secondly the electric metre ran out while cooking dinner and the local shop that was open couldn't put more electric on the key as it had frozen, (luckily my dp at the time hadn't drunk anything and was able to drive around a few different shops) and thirdly whilst this was going on my ds a very spirited hm toddler at the time flooded the toilet and water and tissue was everywhere.

Tips plenty of electric, don't have toddlers and feed the dc plenty of f&v and immune boosting foods.

We always have at least one incident at Christmas. Most notable were:

There was a loud bang from the kitchen while eating our turkey. Rushed in to find thick black smoke obscuring the top half of the kitchen. Ducked down holding breath to find and open the window. When the smoke cleared we found that the pressure cooker with the Christmas pudding had boiled dry. The safety plug of the pressure cooker had melted and was now on the ceiling along with bits of what looked like Christmas pudding .... The plastic bowl the pudding was in was melted and the pudding was now charcoal. We had ice-cream for pudding and I now microwave the pudding.

I set the sleeve of my mohair jumper on fire reaching over the candles on the table to give DS his pudding. Luckily I put it out quickly and was not burned.

Tip for a stress free day:
Have your first full Christmas meal by candlelight on Christmas Eve. The shops are still open if you have forgotten anything, there is still a wonderful air of anticipation, and you have a stress free morning on Christmas Day with the DC opening and playing with their presents. We started this when the DC were small but kept it going as everyone loves the tradition now.

we dropped the turkey getting it out of the oven when I was 15.
The labrador got to it before my dad did.
We hacked off the chewed bit and ate it anyway.

A few disasters! I sat on the pudding leaving no desert. Just jumped onto the counter top casually to feel a squashing sensation an heard my Mum gasp. Then there was the year I forgot to pack my Mum's gift.

We went to my mother in law's one year, and her oven had packed up that morning. When we arrived she had distributed the food around her neighbours ovens and we had to run round the street collecting everything at the appropriate times - it was quite entertaining, but she was horrified by the whole thing!

Last year I was really organised and made the red cabbage dish in the slow cooker. Unfortunately I forgot all about it and came across it several days later. It stank!

I was 22 and working at an upmarket hotel as a waitress in my home town trying to save money to go travelling. I was on shift for Christmas Day which I was v un happy about but tried to make the most of it by putting tinsel in hair, sparkly glitter make up on etc. when I got to the hotel which was 99% staffed by non British nationals not one person wished me Happy Christmas. It was only half an hour later when I experienced some mild chafing that I realised I had forgotten to put a bra on that day. Think white shirt, no bra, full length apron which was narrow enough at the top so that it just sat inside the nipples. How that happened is beyond me but there you go. Cue one desperate call to my sister to bring one down for me and she took ages to turn up because my dad had been bitten on the ear by the new rescue dog and needed to be taken to hospital and my step mum couldn't take him because she had broken her leg 2 days before. I got home at 1am, opened my presents by myself in a cold, dark house and went to bed. Bah humbug.

First christmas in our own home we decided to cook christmas dinner just the two of us. I badly burnt my hand taking the lid off the steamer and spent our first Christmas dinner eating one handed with my other hand in a bowl of iced water.

Overfilling the cupboards above the glass hobs with Christmas treats. I knocked half the contents out while gently stacking my shopping in there. The hobs smashed... That was an expensive start to Christmas!

Pre-me, DP's bulldog wolfed down the entire turkey plus bones while DP and housemate were in pub. They had to have beans on toast.

Last Christmas did not go according to plan when our eldest son had an operation on Christmas eve following an accident in a softplay centre where Dh had been looking after the kids while I did the shopping. We plan to give soft play a,wide berth this year.

No disasters yet ( touch wood).
But preparation is the key.
And either have very few over for Christmas dinner, or even better go somewhere else :) keeps it simple!

I called the fire brigade because i thought my neighbours house was on fire and they wouldn't open the door. Turns out it was red Christmas lights flashing and they weren't answering because they were at morning mass...... They got a shock when they arrived home to a future engine on their driveway

Have festive turkey wraps instead of sandwiches for the next week day. There is something about having a mini Christmas dinner, (sprouts and cranberry sauce included) in a squishy, warm wrap. So good washed down with hot chocolate.

My husband likes the turkey cooked on a low heat overnight so that he can wake to the house smelling like turkey. One year I duly did so and went to bed shortly thereafter. In the morning I woke, dealt with the turkey only to find that the legs had pierced holes in the foil covering the tin and the turkey was extremely dried out.

Fortunately I was able to save it by way of smothering it with gravy and re-covering it with foil. The gravy and the steam from it put moisture back into the bird and by the time it came to carving it for lunch it practically fell off the bone which made it a lot easier to serve.