I'm pretty certain it's ok to start talking about Christmas and Christmas gifts, I don't know about you but my family is mahoosive and so if I don't start now they won't be getting gifts or delightful Christmas Day food until February.

This week I was pleased to be offered a spot in an online magazine gift guide, and part of the process involved me creating a gift guide page. The gift guide (below) highlights some of the most popular items in the shop, and last years most popular Christmas card design too - a saucy illustrated portrait of the character Frank N Furter from the musical movie classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This is just a tiny selection of the hundreds of gifts, cards and jewellery available in store for purchase this gift giving season, I hope it wets your appetite sufficiently to click the link and go browsing! Even if you're not ready yet, it pays to be prepared and you can always bookmark favourite items for future consideration before the big day. Take care over postal dates though, which we've discussed in more detail below.

And talking of being prepared, I highly recommend you read my 'ESSENTIAL CHRISTMAS GUIDE AND PRINTABLE PLANNER' to keep ahead of the game.

FREE UK SHIPPING

We're offering free UK shipping (with a minimum spend of £25) for the forseeable future, and with hundreds of products to choose from, I'm sure you can find enough in store to reach that amount and save on the cost of postage.

With regards to postage, don't forget that the post can be slower over the busy Christmas period. We use Royal Mail for all of our postage because they're incredibly reliable, I've not had them lose a parcel even once yet!

However with the best will in the world, Royal Mail does get bogged down during the gift giving season and while most parcels are still delivered fairly swiftly there is definitely a slight slow down, and international buyers in particular should be particularly cautious when it comes to allowing enough time for a parcel to reach their country from the UK.

Royal Mail have provided a useful document advising their recommended last postage dates from the UK to overseas locations, and advise the following for International Standard mail parcels (which is the International postage service we use with them).

Saturday 2 December

Africa, Middle East Wednesday 6 December Asia, Cyprus, Far East, Eastern Europe (except Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia)

Thursday 7 December

Caribbean, Central and South America

Saturday 9 December

Australia, Greece, New Zealand

Wednesday 13 December

Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland

Thursday 14 December

Canada, Finland, Sweden, USA

Friday 15 December

Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Portugal, Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland

Saturday 16 December

Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg