Planning the Home Christmas Dinner on a Budget

There are many alternatives when it comes to organising a Christmas Dinner celebration in the home. Many families (and even friends) are opting for seafood instead of the roast turkey. Christmas dinners can get rather expensive, stressful and time consuming, yet things don't need to be this way. Usually around mid-September every year, retailers are stocking up on some tasty Christmas puddings, and other Christmas delicacies. Some forward planning will make things easier come December 25 in the home.



Before you put that shopping list together, it is important to assess how much you're willing to spend on this, and work from there. Also, what food preferences do your Christmas Dinner guests convey? The latter also needs to be taken into consideration.

Be creative

If your family is into a seafood Christmas dinner for example; perhaps there could be a family member or two who is either a professional fisherman, and/or there could be someone who loves going out fishing on the weekends. If they're going fishing anytime soon before Christmas, send them out on a fishing trip for the Christmas Dinner. This is a great money saver in itself. If you need extra dinnerware, your family are able to help out and bring some from their home.



Maybe you might have a family member (or a friend you're inviting) who is a professional chef, and you can ask to borrow a couple of cook books in catering for larger groups, and to save you some time.

Delegate and share

You do not need to do all of the shopping yourself. Guests (friends and family) on such occasions are always more than willing to help out by preparing a couple of entrees and/or a dessert, so you can focus on the main event. Sharing is always caring, and is a great way to keep costs down some more.



The plastic fantastic

Or the plastic 'not so fantastic,' depending on your point of view. If you have a retail group based credit card; find out if they have an interest free, or a Christmas deferred payment option if you use that dedicated credit card to purchase Christmas food supplies within a certain time window. For example, all David Jones American Express cardholders can defer their repayments for all items purchased in their stores from the 1st of November to the 24th of December, until February the following year. The food halls at David Jones do sell the essentials for a fantastic and cost effective Christmas dinner.



If you have any other ideas in keeping costs down, when it comes to organising Christmas lunches and dinners, please leave your comments where indicated.

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#_food
#_christmas

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