Remember my post about the Christmas parcels we’re making up for our local food bank? Well today, I thought I’d give you a bit of an update…
In case you missed that post, we’re basically making some Christmas hampers for local families which we hope to include everything they’ll need to cook their Christmas Dinner other than the turkey. 😉 I’m aiming for eight parcels but I’ve started early so if I get enough for the eight then I’ll do more if I have the chance.
First things first, I got in touch with our local food bank to make sure that they would be OK with me making these types of hampers and they absolutely were but they did have a few things they wanted me to bear in mind:
- They asked me to use the larger bags for life to make the hampers in so they were easy for people to carry and were easy to store at their end.
- They also asked me to bear in mind that most people would have to take the bag away and either walk home or get the bus so they said to try not to go too heavy.
Thinking about this, I’ve started to buy an extra bag for life whenever I go in Aldi as their bags are quite large and sturdy with long handles so they’re going to be the most comfortable to carry.
This is what I have so far:
- 8 tubs of gravy granules which cost me 20p each. I asked in my Spend Less, Live Better Facebook group before I bought these as I worried that 20p gravy granules just wouldn’t do the job. The feelings were mixed so I ended up buying some myself to test it out and I was seriously impressed and my lot didn’t notice the difference between the 20p gravy granules and the ones I usually buy.
- 8 boxes of stuffing which cost me 20p each and again, we’ve tried this and didn’t notice any difference between this brand and the brand of stuffing we usually buy although to be fair, covered in gravy we probably wouldn’t notice any difference anyway. 😉
- 8 tins of carrots which I think were 22p each.
- 8 tins of peas which were 27p each.
- 4 tubs of Christmassy ginger biscuits which were on offer at 2 for £1.50. I only have four of these so I’m on the lookout for some other nice but cheapish Christmassy tins or boxes of biscuits.
I feel like I’ve now got all the ‘cheap’ things which are what I would class as the things that I can buy enough for all of my eight parcels in one week’s shop and I’m now moving on to the things that I’ll need to split over more than one week.
(The reason for my updates on our food bank project is because I want as many people as possible to see what you can do to help their own local food bank. My last post went into this in much more detail if you want to have a look at the things you can do year round if you want to have a look.)
Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address here and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter, BlogLovin or Networked Blogs and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. You can find out more about me here.
