Share with AO.com how you get your kitchen prepared for Christmas! £300 voucher to be won! NOW CLOSED

[EllieMumsnet]

Christmas can be a time to be with family, indulge in all your favourite foods, share gifts and have some well needed relaxation. However it can also be quite hectic, particularly within the kitchen all that food has to be stored and cooked somewhere! With that being said, AO want you to share how you get your kitchen ready for the Christmas period.

Here’s what AO have to say: “At AO we’ve got Christmas wrapped up, helping take the stress out of the festive season. We know that Christmas is more than the decorations and the presents, your home has to be ready too. Don’t risk a kitchen disaster when you're elbow deep in sprouts and cranberry sauce!

So deck your kitchen out with our fantastic deals. Think large capacity ovens and cookers for the BIGGEST turkey and all the trimmings, fridge freezers for stocking up on all those snacks and drinks and dishwashers to make that post-Christmas clean up a dream. You can even buy now and pay nothing for 12 months on selected appliances, so you can cook, toast and feast to your heart’s content.

When you shop with AO, you can rest assured we'll make it easy for you, with 1000s of appliances to choose from, delivered and installed in time for the big day. So you can concentrate on planning the best Christmas, ever!”

Do you decorate your kitchen to give it a Christmassy feel? Perhaps you have an ‘eat up everything in the fridge’ dinner to clear some space for the Christmas food? Maybe you buy extra kitchen utensils to ensure you’re not short of anything on the big day?

Whatever you do to get your kitchen prepared for Christmas, post it on the thread below and every MNer who posts will be entered into a prize draw, where one lucky winner will randomly selected to receive a £300 voucher of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck!
MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs apply

I love getting the Christmas mugs out! I try to add to the novelty Christmas kitchen utensils/teatowels/mugs collection each year (usually in the sales!!) & it really makes it feel festive :)
Little things like a spiced apple candle or some mulled spice washing up liquid (I really did find some last year!) can really give a festive feel too.

I don't decorate the kitchen, I don't spend enough time in there. If it was also a dining room i'd probably decorate it but I only use it for cooking so I don't bother :)

We always make our kitchen feel Christmassy with decorations and candles - we also put a candle wreath centrepiece in the middle of the table.

We go to my mother-in-laws for Christmas dinner so never have to do any food prep ourselves but I'm always the one that washes up!

nothing particular, a general clean and put our advent calendar up. I am not keen on lots of decorations as our pets tend to want to chew or eat them!

We run the freezer down a few weeks before. My oven is always clean but I do give everything a really good steam clean. I do decorate my kitchen, we have a small artificial tree and a nativity in the window. The kids have a nativity advent calendar every year. I have a festive fruit bowl which comes out for Christmas, I fill it with seasonal fruits and nuts. I swap my tea towels for Christmassy ones, I put a father Christmas stop here door mat by the back door and some window decorations in the window. I put the kids home-made decorations on the fridge. Although I am not a drinker I start buying a bottle of wine or spirit every week a few weeks before Christmas for any guest these go on the side board with a Christmas runner.

Only thing we do is make sure we eat everything in the fridge/freezer to make room for more stuff that we will also eat... there's a pattern here right, and of course this also applies to any leftover alcohol in the fridge/on worktop surfaces 'taking up space'.

I like to do as much the day before, so the decks are clear on Christmas morning.

For breakfast, we buy frozen pastries from the local farm shop & bung them in the oven - they’re eaten with a glass of Buck’s fizz (how 70’s!).

Veggies are all pre-prepared & in pans of water, so just need cooked in fresh boiling water on the stove before serving. Cranberry sauce is already done & the bird goes in the oven.

Someone in the family will have made soup, whilst another will have been delegated pudding.

This means I can relax & enjoy spending time with family; it’s so important when the kids are young & still believe in Santa.

I don’t decorate the kitchen, but do the dining room & obviously the table. I have fairy lights, candles, table decorations & crackers of course.

Thankfully there’s a dishwasher so no washing up after. And a microwave in case of re-heats.

Overall, i just try to enjoy the day & not get stressed about the meal.

I'm another who runs the freezer down, to make space for all the batch baking and bits I put by.
And I also bring out the Xmas glasses and mugs..
But this year I fancy a change, so for the first time, I may decorate the kitchen too - I'll def do fairy lights, but I may also get a small tree, just for the kitchen...

We've just moved to a new house and are having a new kitchen fitted in time to host Christmas (when I'll also be 35 weeks pregnant!).

Hopefully there'll be a bit of money left over to make the kitchen/dining room look suitably festive!

Clean it.

Get creative and make meals by using everything in the cupboards and freezers (we have odd meals but it does mean that we also save a bit of cash).

Decorate with lots of lights.

It stays at it is to be honest

We don't go overboard with extra food so there's no need to make much room. We buy our normal shop and just a few extras otherwise we waste too much :)

Try and empty the fridge freezer in advance to free up space

nothing for the kitchen start prepping before making gravy etc..

We have a big declutter. So sort the cupboards the fridge freezer etc. Then have one cupboard which will have everything we need for Christmas so the bigger pots pans etc so we know where it is.

I have someone into clean my oven and I bleach everything Possible. I also clean grouting on floor tiles. The only decorations I have are paper chains that dc make (although well away from ovens hob). We don't eat in the kitchen but I do have a festive oilcloth tablecloth for the table where I plate up

Clean the oven (least favourite job!) eat up stuff from the freezer so there's room for Christmas food, pretty Christmas table cloth plus some fairy lights and a few deorations in the kitchen and we are ready to go! Oh yes, we also have another fridge/ freezer in the shed which gets a clean out and then turned on ready for the big shop!

The oven has its annual clean and the cupboards are cleaned and attempted to be emptied a little to make room for the Christmas treats.
Christmas tea-towels and kitchen roll are dug out. Decorated just like all the other rooms.

The oven has its annual clean and we run the freezer down to make room, but otherwise I use the Xmas tea towels and plates all year round to make myself smile and feel all fuzzy so no change there. I also get a little frisson of excitement when I wear my Xmas socks in July....

I do a cupboard clear. Take everything out and have a big sort out, getting rid of out of date stuff etc. Putting it all back very neatly. By boxing day it's back to how it was but it at least makes me feel in control for a while!

I just give it a jolly good clean, make sure the freezer has been defrosted and suspect items defrosted to see what they are.

Next week is bake the christmas cake week. Hoorah!

First thing first I give the kitchen a deep clean including cleaning the oven and defrosting the freezer so November and the beginning of December I use up all the food in the freezer to get it ready to stock up for the festive period.
I also have my speaker in the kitchen with a Christmas playlist on my phone ready to play when I am cooking and preparing all the Christmas treats to get me in the mood. As far as decorations go I don't really decorate the kitchen but a beautiful Ponsietta is a must as it just looks so Christmassy.

Christmas pictures printed off the web and coloured in by the DCs are put on the cupboard doors. Fairy lights around the tops of the cupboards. I have Christmas dish clothes and red and green hand towels, and make sure that we've cleared out space in the freezer (makes for some odd meals in December).

Clear space in the cupboards for all of the ingredients and snack foods needed; clean and sort the fridge ready to play fridge Tetris. Normally I'd do the same with the freezer, but I bought a chest freezer a month or so ago so we'd have extra capacity!

At the beginning of December I put Christmas tea towels and hand towels in the kitchen as a little seasonal touch.

I turned over my kitchen calendar to write in a December appointment the other day and was shocked to find “BUY NEW TURKEY ROASTING DISH” in big letters on the 1st December. Thinking back, I dimly remember throwing the knackered old one away after we finished Christmas Dinner last year, and thinking that I wouldn’t replace it immediately because it takes so much space to store. So that will be my Christmas planning - keeping an eye out in December for a good new roasting tin at a decent price.

I’ll also tell my Neff oven to give itself a clean so it’s all shiny for Christmas. Best decision I ever made getting a pyrolytic - especially when I think of the money my DPs shell out on professional oven cleaning.