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

I remember one chritmas eve the kettle broke! It was about 8 in the evening so nowhere would have been open to buy a new one. No biggie, we used the hob to make a cuppa. Then the microwave blew up! (Not quite literally, but it was certainly unusable) we was all saying how can two appliances break on the same day!

Then Christmas Day came and the electric carving knife broke!!!

It doesn't seem like a lot writing it down now but when it was happening we couldn't believe our luck! Or lack of.

this will possibly out me but.... I adore Lidl
a few years ago, we went to my mum's for Christmas day. I was heavily pregnant, and we had the kids...laden down with presents and wine.
We got there on time, to find an ambulance outside.
We ran to the front door and hammered on it, panic setting in. I rang the house phone, and their mobiles; no answer.
How do you go and knock on an ambulance to see if your parents are inside? Utterly awful. I was weeping, my DH pacing the drive, unsure what to do next. I begged him to approach the ambulance to see what had happened - I thought my mum had fallen or my dad had had a heart attack.
We watched DH walk over to it, and the dc pointed up at the house and laughed. My dad was at his bedroom window, draped in a towel. He'd been having a morning Christmas bath ffs. My mum had forgotten what time it was and was out walking the dogs.

After all that, it was a great day, even more precious really after the fear.
The ambulance had been for the family next door who needed a new oxygen tank.

Last year my pipes in the kitchen got blocked, and the washing machine flooded my kitchen and my kitchen sink was unusable, all on xmas eve night - cue me crying my eyes out while pouring a couple of bottles worth of sink unblocker down the drain and hoping for the best!! It had still not fully cleared on christmas day until the afternoon so for most of the day the washing up was done in the bathroom sink!!!
Every year i always get overwhelmed by having to create the perfect xmas dinner, start crying that nobody is helping me then usually get annoyed at whoever does help as they start getting under my feet in my tiny little kitchen!!
Top tip: go to someone elses house for dinner!! which is what i am doing this year!!

My Granny burned the turkey one year, I can't think how as they always take ages to cook!! But my other Granny who was staying with us spent the rest of the day clutching her handbag in case she needed to make a speedy exit! (I was around 7 at the time)
Many years later, the dog ate some of the presents one year, he got in our bedroom (totally off limits usually) sniffed out the jelly babies, got into the box and ate the lot. He got into the licquorice all sorts but left them! Can't have been to his taste!! And then the phone call from DH in a panic when he got home from work (around the 8th December) asking where I bought the advent calendar from so he could replace it as the dog (obviously) had eaten all of the chocolates. Luckily DSS (who was 8 or 9 at the time) was philosophical about it when we had to tell him!
None of these are exactly disastrous, but all add to the things that make Christmas memorable!

Top tips - if you have guests check what they are expecting to make sure it's catered for!! (e.g. my in-laws always have a trifle instead of Christmas pudding, and you'd be a brave host to suggest that they stay and you didn't provide one!!)

If you don't want bubble bath all over the duvet at 5am on Christmas Day, make sure you sellotape the bubble bath lid onto the bubble bath bottle in DCs stockings. LOTS of sellotape. (Smelt nice though)

One year we had eaten our Christmas lunch of roast turkey and all the trimmings it was the evening and sandwich time we were having cold turkey, cheese and then tinned ham sandwich they were all made up and ready to eat my partner started to dig in and had bitten into a tinned ham sandwich got half way through and decided it tasted strange. Upon investigation the tinned ham turned out to be in a tin where the label had come off and as my grandma made the sandwich she said the ham smelt strange but had carried on making it anyway. The ham turned out to be dog food! Yuck!

Lesson to be learned don't use tins without labels!

The worst christmas was when we were flooded.
We managed to get the water out before guests arrived...but the house stank, of rancid cooking oil (that had caused the blocked drains)
I had to open all the windows all day.
It was a white christmas...

My dad once put the dinner on a platter he had previously glued back together with predictable consequences! It's been a running joke about him "fixing" things with superglue since...

My tip is to have the Christmas day that you want to have, rather than the Christmas day you think you ought to have. If it's a quiet day with just you and the children and no one is likely to appreciate turkey with 6 veg, 2 different potatoes and sherry gravy with clementine extract then it's fine not to do it.

Of course, if you really do want that, then prepare what you can ahead. I normally have home made stuffings and pigs in blankets in the freezer by the beginning of December.

And if it takes a dollop of ketchup to persuade the kids to try something new, then that's fine, too, even if you would never see it in a glossy mag and your MIL would disown you, if she found out.

Don't forget to close the kitchen door while the turkey is resting, if you own a large dog.

A mistake you only make once, that.

The large dog was so large in fact, that my husband walked past the kitchen, saw him standing on hind legs at the hob and thought it was his mother making gravy wearing some kind of Afghan coat.

Christmas dinner tip:

Cook turkey so that it is ready an hour and a quarter before you want it.
Get a cool box
Take turkey out of the oven, drain off the fat and tip the turkey into the cool box
Put lid on
Use empty oven for veg and potatoes
When they are ready, take the turkey our of the cool box and carve it. It will be beautifully rested and moist

My tip is similar to ouryve and not to be sucked into all the pressure that is around in magazines and shops to have the perfect Christmas. You need to decide what makes your special Christmas and enjoy it.

My tip is to do as much as you can in advance.
The kids will get us up early, but if no kids get up early.
Don't drink until you know exactly what you're doing and when.
Write a list of timings so you can tick them off.

My tip is don't be afraid to delegate. Let all your guests have a job. Give them plenty of notice of what their contribution is - be it sprouts, a pudding or starters. Shares the cost and the stress!

My tip is don't stress about it, it's only one day and if it doesn't go to plan then you can have another go next year.

I prep everything in advance and if the worst happens then we can just eat cheese and crackers and drink wine.

Preparation. Batteries. Toys assembled in good time. Share jobs out (ie get husband to do dinner). We often have 'our' Christmas dinner a few days before Christmas - we're relaxed because not cramming everything into one day. Then Xmas day itself; presents and nice things, then go to family later.

Our first married xmas and the realisation that dh's extended family take it in turns to entertain each other almost every day...
Earlier on I had suggested to dh that we bought the food but he said there was plenty if time, which there would have been if his mother had not served up turkey leftovers that were clearly past their best. Dh was fine but Inwas confined to bed/near the bathroom for a couple.of days. I emerged in the morning of our party. The central heating broke down, after two days in bed I needed a shower/hairwash and had to resort to boiling kettles. We arrived at our chosen supermarket to find it closed...and the next and the next. It must have been the only day over the festive period that they were all closed. We did eventually find a corner shop that was open!!

Plan and lots of lists, lost for all occasions is how I do it. I like to know I'm on track with my plan by ticking it off a list.

Ahem list for all occasions

I'll never live this one down....

When I was 16 we were having the usual huge family Christmas. The turkey and trimmings were in the oven, Christmas music on and presents being played with. My parents popped next door for a drink and asked me to turn the oven DOWN to the lowest setting after 30 minutes. No problem. Except of course I turned it UP. Queue black smoking Turkey & trimmings being pulled out the oven an hour later!

Whoops!

Cooking a duck upside down and wondering why there wasn't much meat on it as the breast was hidden underneath made me feel like a real idiot!

I once got up early Christmas morning before everyone else to put the turkey in the oven. I then had a leisurely morning watching our children open their presents. I could smell the turkey cooking beautifully so didn't check it until midday when I realised that I hadn't switched on the oven. The nice cooking smell was all in my head.

We ate lunch very late that day but it didn't matter at all as it was such a relaxing day and our children got to spend the day playing with all their new toys. No-one went hungry due to the sheer amount of treats we consumed.
Since then I have decided that late Christmas lunches are the way to go.

Make a list well in advance. It does help!! Don't assume you will remember things.

To make life easier - get takeaway Christmas Eve. Then have time free that evening to prep veg for the next day (or relax!)

The door fell off our oven on Christmas Day, I kid you not. We had to wedge it in place with a chair whilst the turkey finished cooking. Not our worst Christmas, however. That was when 3 out of the 4 of us came down with a vomiting bug. DH was so ill he fainted in the bathroom and cut his head open on the side of the bath :D