Giving Extra to Someone Special This Christmas.

To me Christmas is always a time for giving. I try to ensure that the gifts I give – no matter what the value – are thoughtful and useful and hopefully won’t sit in someone’s cupboard until the following Christmas for them to then be passed on.

This year has not been easy whatsoever for me on the earning front. Working part-time is never easy on the purse strings anyway but it is a choice between doing that or paying after school childcare which means just as much a loss of money and less security for Grace. However, what has made it worse is not only has my car let me down on many occasions – meaning I couldn’t teach – but we then moved house and it would have meant building up a whole new client base so Ross and I agreed that I should give my freelance writing a go, which also means building up the work. It hasn’t been easy.

As a result Ross has been the main breadwinner and paid the lion’s share of the household bills. Something I am eternally grateful to him for at the same time as feeling extremely guilty. Especially when I have been lucky enough to get some amazing opportunities as a result of my blogging and writing this year.

When the Halifax asked me if I would like to join their campaign I was thrilled. It finally meant I could get something wonderful for Ross for Christmas without spending money that I didn’t have.

I knew exactly what I was going to get too.

Ross has been eyeing up my iPad Mini since I was lucky enough to be given one back in October. Of course, I couldn’t stretch to an Apple product but I had been watching the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 with 7 inch screen. I knew this size would be perfect for what Ross would use it for. The price was originally at £199.99 but had been fluctuating from anywhere between £129.99 down to £99.99. As well as Halifax contributing to the cost, I also received a voucher from Amazon giving me £10 off if I spent over £50!

So….I played the waiting game….and it worked!

As soon as I saw the Samsung on offer at £99.99 I put it straight into my virtual shopping basket and paid up! So with a little help from others, I actually paid £39.99 out of my own pocket.

Because it was a special present, I made sure that I gave it some special wrapping and explained to Ross that it was the last gift he should open on Christmas Day.

He was thrilled. He said ‘This is going to be extremely useful in so many different ways, from being able to do research on a decent sized screen whilst on the move to being able to alleviate boredom on lengthy commutes with any number of the apps available on this tremendous piece of technology! It does far more than my phone ever thought of doing and yet is not an unwieldy piece of equipment to carry around . Also, because of the size it will fit in a jacket pocket very easily.’

After all the things my man has done for me this year, I was so happy to be able to give something back.

With thanks to Halifax who gave me a £50 Amazon voucher to spend on someone special this Christmas.

I’ve also linked this post up to ‘What’s The Story?’ over on Podcast this week.