A Blogging Secret Santa Challenge

There is much excitement in my office at the moment. We have each pulled out a name from a hat (an actual Santa hat) so we know who we are to be Secret Santa for. The big exchange of £5 gifts will take place next Wednesday when each of us gets to see whether our colleagues know us at all. Eek!

But I have an added excitement this year, as I have been invited to take part in a blogging Secret Santa thanks to MoneySupermarket.com. All those taking part have been paired up with another blogger and is challenged to buy a Secret Santa present for them. Such fun!

The challenge is to find a gift for our partner blogger for less than £25 (we have each been given this money in order to take part) – while that is more than your average Secret Santa gift it gives us good opportunity to buy something lovely. MoneySupermarket.com want to highlight that buying gifts this Christmas needn’t mean you need to raid your savings or max out the credit card.

Normally when we do Secret Santa some thought goes into the gift based on your knowledge of that person. It was much more difficult this time – I have been partnered with Fay of Food Fables.  I’ve never met Fay and actually hadn’t come across her blog until I received my email from MoneySupermarket.com, so I made some tea and sat down to read through lots of her posts to find out what might make a suitable gift.

I discovered fairly quickly that she can’t have too much cows milk and isn’t a fan of nuts. She loves spices and pies (what girl doesn’t?!). She takes part in foodie pen pals once a month (which sounds really interesting, I must look into that more), drinks coffee, bakes cakes, enjoys meat, loves Thai and Italian food, enjoys sushi, loves cakes, and truly loves jelly sweets (but not Haribo!). I also learnt that she’s hoping for a pasta maker for Christmas (I hope the extra hint helps!).

Oh, and I stopped on her Rolo Cupcakes post way too long so had to link to it specifically… they look simply amazing and I will be making them when I get some time!

Obviously I’m not going to give away what I have bought for Fay but I will say that based on what she’s put on her blog, I think she’ll like it. I hope she will anyway! It should arrive in the next week or so and you should see a post on her blog about it between now and Christmas… I really hope I’ve got this right!

Oh and of course as part of the deal I get a Secret Santa present too. I’ll let you know what that is when it arrives. I wonder what it will be?!

For more details about the Secret Santa Challenge visit the special area on the MoneySupermarket.com website, oh and if you’ve got a few minutes to spare there is a (very addictive) game on the Christmas area of their site. If you feel like chatting about the Secret Santa Challenge on twitter please use the hashtag #MSMSecretSanta so I and the other bloggers taking part can see what you think.