A Santa who Loves Books Is The Best Kind

I am lucky enough to have made a few very good friends in the world of book blogging and generally a lovely side effect of that is receiving lots of awesome bookish presents throughout the year and especially at Christmas. However, the downside of that is having to buy lots of awesome bookish presents too! In itself the buying is not a problem as I love making parcels and especially love shopping people's wishlists. The only problem is that with four or five people to shop for I can all too easily end up spending a fortune! This year some clever people came up with the idea of doing a Secret Santa and I just received my parcel this morning. I won't say who it's from as I know not everybody has received theirs yet, but it's amazing and thank you again! :-) Here's what I got: 

Yes, the notebook is upside down but in my defence I was taking the photo on my phone with one hand, balancing Sam on my other arm and trying to stop Benji from smearing spaghetti and sauce all over everything including me! Seriously, amazing parcel! The wrapping paper was also really cool and I may have saved it to do something crafty with Benji. Not sure what yet, but it will be good! In case you can't see here's what I have:

- Chocolate from Hotel Chocolat. I've already consumed Ho Ho of the Ho Ho Hos. I'm saving the final one for Rhys because I'm nice, but I am definitely eating the massive slab of reindeer chocolate myself!

- a pretty little notebook which is exactly the right size to put in my handbag :-) 

- The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton which was from my wishlist. I think starting with this will be less intimidating than The Luminaries which is absolutely gigantic! 

- The Bookshop Book by Jen Campbell was an entirely unexpected gift but one that I'm super excited about reading. It sounds really quirky and interesting and from my quick flip through it there are some gorgeous pictures of bookshops in it! It's coming with me to London for some Christmas reading.

Much as I love receiving presents, there's definitely something to be said for doing it this way rather than everybody buying for everybody. I also feel like it made us use our knowledge of each other's personalities rather than just our book wishlists which was nice, and kind of surprising how well we know each other despite only having physically met a handful of times! Ah the power of the internet :-) 

I loved my secret santa parcel and loved shopping for my recipient as well. Let's make sure we organise another meet up in 2015 please? (If you're interested in seeing what my other blogger friends got from their secret santas, I know Katie has posted about her parcel. I guess everybody else is too busy to blog at the moment, or they're saving their parcels until Christmas!)