9 Budget Ideas for Christmas Stocking Fillers

For me, Christmas is more about the little touches and small details. I love buying thoughtful little gifts for friends and family. My favourite part of present buying is putting a Christmas stocking together for the boys. I fill them with little things I know they will enjoy and use over the year.

Our Christmas stockings tend to be a mixture of fun stuff and practical stuff. I’m not beyond padding out a stocking with a new toothbrush (because Santa really cares about dental hygiene) and some new toiletries; but my Christmas stockings always have lots of fun stuff, chocolate and the obligatory satsuma in them.

Nine Great Budget Ideas for Christmas Stocking Fillers

Here’s what’s in his Christmas stocking this year –

Chocolate Coins – it’s the law to have a bag of chocolate coins in your stocking. We’ve gone for these colourful emoji coins (£1). They make a bit of a change (pun intended) from your standard gold or silver coins.

Marvel Avengers Assemble Collectible Capsules – these little figures come in a surprise egg (not really an egg, more of a capsule). Kids love the surprise egg thing, so I know this will be very popular. I’ve seen them in other shops for £3.99, but these are a bargain £1.99 and I’m wishing I’d picked up a couple more now.

Hot Wheels Cars – toy cars are a regular feature in our Christmas stockings, they’re small, easy to wrap and popular. They’re also a pocket friendly £1.49 each, so I got two new ones for his collection.

Mini Block Tech Figures – These are Lego style mini figures, but they’re much cheaper than Lego. These figures come in a “blind bag” and there are three in the bag. At £1 per pack, these three mini figures come with their own accessories and they’re much cheaper than the brand leader!

Marvel Avengers Bath & Shower Gel – this pack of four shower gels (£3.99) is ripe for breaking up and wrapping individually. Each bottle is shaped and styled like one of your favourite Avengers heroes – Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, Thor and Iron Man. I know these might even encourage him to spend a bit more time in the bathroom (maybe).

Marvel Comics Stationery Set – you can never have too much stationery and this five piece stationery set featuring his favourite Marvel characters will be a winner. The ruler, pen and pencil are all covered in comic book versions of Spider-Man; Iron Man; Thor; the Incredible Hulk and Captain America. At just £1.29 this set contains everything he will need to write a superhero story of his own!

Voice Changer – this is a silly little stocking filler. Speak into the microphone and it will change your voice so you sound like a boy, a girl or a robot. I know he will love this (and the dog will hate it, probably). At £2.99 this is a bit of silliness you need in a Christmas stocking.

Swizzels Mini Candy Canes – this giant box of mini candy canes (£1.99 for 240g) will be put to good use. I’ll slip a few into presents for other people, use a handful in some festive bakes and tip the rest into his stocking. The box contains four iconic Swizzels flavours – Drumstick lolly flavour; blue Refreshers; pink Refreshers and of course Parma Violet (I’ll be keeping those just for me).

Socks – Christmas tradition dictates that every stocking must contain a pair of Christmas socks to be worn that day. I need to pop back to B&M and see what they’ve got in store.

That’s my Christmas stocking shopping almost finished and it’s only cost me £18.72, a bit of a bargain yes? All I need to do now is wrap everything up and throw a satsuma in the night before. I’m feeling uncommonly organised and that’s a great feeling!

What are you stuffing your Christmas stockings with this year?

Toy Review: Cognitoys Dino Interactive Dinosaur

Interactive toys are starting to become really popular these days. We were sent the new Cognitoys Dino Interactive Dinosaur to try out. Given that the boy loves dinosaurs in all forms, we thought we’d be onto a winner. But what did we really think?

First of all, if you’ve ordered one of these from Father Christmas I suggest you carefully open the box, put the batteries in (you’ll need a small screwdriver) and then have a read of the instructions. You’ll need to download a free app to get your dino up and running. It’s probably better to do all this before you’re sat in a room with an impatient child who wants to play with their toy now, this instant, immediately!

Toy Review: Cognitoys Dino Interactive Dinosaur

The Cognitoys Dino is really easy to set up. The batteries (4AA’s if you need spares) just slot into the battery compartment underneath. You download the app and connect the dino to your Wi-Fi and then he’s good to go.

The mouth of your Cognitoys Dino will change colour to indicate what he is doing. If it’s blue he’s talking, if it’s yellow he’s listening etc. You press down the button on his tummy to talk to him and let go of the button when you’ve finished.

The Cognitoys Dino is meant to be an educational toy which helps to develop and improve problem solving skills; creative reasoning, social interaction and active play. He’s fun and funny; so when he asks you a question or asks you to solve a problem, it doesn’t feel overtly educational. The dino is aimed at children aged 5+. It’s designed to adapt to your child’s development and educationally ‘grow’ with your child.

My son who has recently turned 7 was pretty excited to be playing with the Cognitoys Dino. Style wise it’s quite a soft and cartoony looking dinosaur and I did wonder if he’d reject it for being too babyish, but he didn’t. He liked the look of it and gave it lots of cuddles.

Toy Review: Cognitoys Dino Interactive Dinosaur

The Cognitoys Dino is easy to activate, just press its button and say “hello”. The dino then randomly starts playing games with you, or tells you a story you have to interact with, and tells jokes or answers questions. He’s really quite good fun. I did like the storytelling, he stops every few minutes to ask you questions and check you understand tricky words. It’s all good age-appropriate stuff.

The app which you download to set it up and activate it also acts as a parent portal, meaning you can keep an eye on what your child has been doing with the dino.

I thought the Cognitoys Dino was an excellent tool to help a child’s development. I do have a couple of slight niggles I want to talk about. You may have noticed I’ve referred to the dino as a he, that’s because he speaks with a gruff male dino voice. I think it would be good to have different voice options to choose from. Helpfully, there are three volume settings underneath, so if your dino is a bit loud you can always turn him down a little.

My other slight concern is that many children have speech issues and I wonder how well the dino is able to process what the child is saying. It didn’t always pick up on what my son was saying. He tends to speak quite fast and sometimes blurs his words into each other. This did force him to speak a bit clearer, which is probably no bad thing.

I’m not that keen that it uses batteries, I think in this day and age it should probably have a USB charging option or a charging stand you can put it on to power it up. Batteries seem such an analogue way to power this interactive toy.

The other thing is manners; something we’ve relentlessly drummed into my son. When the Cognitoys Dino asked him if he wanted to play a game Ben replied “Yes please”, but the dino didn’t really understand what he’d said. I know this is a personal niggle, but manners are everything and it would be nice if the dino could recognise and reward good manners to help reinforce what we do at home.

The Cognitoys Dino currently costs around £104 from Amazon UK. It’s a clever piece of kit. We found it really simple to set up and my son found it easy and really enjoyable to use. It’s not perfect, but it is very clever, engaging and hopefully a tool we can use to encourage some good developmental activity at home.

To find out more about the Cognitoys Dino, visit their website.

We were sent the Cognitoys Dino for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Days Out: Christmas at Dunham Massey, Cheshire

We were invited guests of Christmas at Dunham Massey. All images and opinions are our own.

Our nearest National Trust property is Dunham Massey. We are regular visitors to Dunham, we love the long (but flat and well-paved) walks they have. The gardens are lovely whatever time of year you visit and the house is full of upstairs-downstairs history. On 1st December we went along to the launch of ‘Christmas at Dunham Massey’ a magical, after-dark, illuminated trail which was jam-packed with Christmas magic.