Yesterday I was up, washed, dressed, and out by 6.40am as I travelled to Exeter in time to join my sister in the Christmas food dash and present wrapping.

I arrived in Exeter around 8.30am and looked after the kids while my sister and brother-in-law went to Aldi for their weekly shop.

We walked to Lidl at Lunchtime to get a few bit and bobs including lovely fresh Cinnamon buns for my sister, brother-in-law, and myself and the kids choose cookies and some Danish buns.

Before dinner, we took a trip out to Sainsbury’s in the evening for some Walnut Whips, cream, crisps, trifle, cranberry sauce, cookies, gravy mix, and mulled wine.

I never realised how stressful the Christmas food dash is until it’s left for my sister and I.

Both of us didn’t feel very festive so we decided to wrap up some of the kid’s presents, eat our Malteser reindeer chocolates, and drink some mulled wine, whilst watching and listening to Christmas music on YouTube.

We also decided to hang the tree chocolates on the tree and test them before putting them on the tree.

We have been looking in several shops for tree chocolates this year and we finally found some in Lidl.

The only chocolates that some shops are selling are the gold chocolate coins, which you can’t hang up.

It’s surprising how long it takes to wrap a few presents because we seemed to take hours after hesitating over which wrapping paper and tags to use.

We finally went to bed around midnight because we had to get up in the morning because my sister is meeting up with her friend at 10am and we are all going into town as I need to buy my Dad some Christmas presents.

Does anyone else have to go out and brave the queues on a Christmas food dash?

Tweet @AdminChick and let us know.