My very first blogger gift swap, and it was lots of fun. I am very glad that I joined into this and will definitely do it again next year. Firstly thanks to Viola from apieceofviola.wordpress.com  who organised this gift swap.

What a great idea and so well organised. Viola set us all up with a paired blogger and then let us get on with it, communicating with each other and agreeing on how we should do our gift swap. My paired blogger is Shannon from  shannonagains.com .

Shannon and I swapped email addresses and spoke to each other quite a bit via Twitter and email. Shannon is really lovely and I couldn’t have asked for a nicer blogger pair. Through our conversations, we agreed that we would spend £7 on each other, (not including the postage). And as a twist for something different, we decided that we would only shop in charity shops. This we hoped would allow us to get extra bargainous gifts. Funnily enough, before we had agreed on the charity shop idea, we had both already bought something small from a normal shop.  😉

We both sent our parcels away and both received them in plenty of time. When I received mine from Shannon, it was so nicely wrapped. It was lovely to have it under the tree until Christmas day. Shannon added a lovely little tag and a nice wooden heart tag. She really did put a lot of effort into the presentation. It made me look forward to opening it. I have to add at this point, when I was wrapping my gift to Shannon, my Husband was very sceptical that I was sending a parcel to a stranger and waiting for a parcel in return. I was very happy to show off my beautiful parcel to him!! ♥

So, Christmas day arrived and I joyfully opened my gifts while Christmas music was playing in the background and my Husband was with me with the camera. I was very lucky with regards all my Christmas gifts. But that’s another story!

Shannon was so intuitive with my gifts, it really felt like she got to know me and the kind of things that I like. I loved all the gifts that she sent and am really thankful to her for all the thought and time that she put into my gift. Here is what she sent me:

I received:

Cinnamon and Spice fragranced candle.

Botanics Set including, body lotion, bath elixir and a mini buffer.

Chocolate Wishes book by Trisha Ashley.

A Christmas Mug with a sachet of Wispa hot chocolate and marshmallow. *

I am very much looking forward to reading the book. On the cover it says ‘full of down to earth humour’ Sophie Kinsella. Sophie Kinsella is my favourite author, so that and the title of this book says it all for me. I’m sure its going to be great.

* When I picked up one of the gifts to unwrap, I got another little surprise as Christmas music started to play! It was the mug, when you lift it up it plays Christmas music. What a great Christmas novelty mug, perfect!

Thank you so much Shannon, great gifts. I will be burning my candle while reading my new book and enjoying a delicious hot chocolate in my fantastic musical Christmas mug. Perfect for my relaxing Christmas holidays.

Shannon will also be writing a post on what she received from me. Here is a sneak preview……. My wrapping was definitely not as creative as Shannon’s. But hopefully she liked what was inside. 😉

Thanks for reading. If you have participated in Violas gift swap or any other gift swap, let me know your thoughts and how your gift swap went.