Ideal Homes Christmas Show

With having had such an enjoyable experience at Ideal Christmas last year, and it being just ten minutes walk away from me now, in Earl's Court, I could hardly resist! Having the day off, I got caught up in planning what films I might go to next week, but eventually scurried out of the house, leaving myself about an hour and a half to go around before I had to race for the airport to fly to Ireland for a long weekend.

I love the way they decorate the place. Here's a photo I took the night before..

Fake snow (on sale inside), abounding in Christmas trees, sleigh bells.. Christmas starts here! There are two floors, packed with things you can buy and people eager to sell them to you.

Here's a photo from last year:

There's an ice rink in the centre, a bandstand where a gospel choir started up while I was there, eateries.

The ground floor is mainly furniture and decorations. The food stalls are mainly on the upper floor. For an extra price, you can buy the show guide, which entitles you to a goody bag. My mother was very appreciative of the Yorkshire Gold tea, and I'm sure her cats will just love the free cat treat sample. The rest will probably get the bin, but hey.

In short, for an hour and a half, I raced around, quickly accumulating very heavy bags. I will say that it's great for present-buying - I got presents for fully five people here today! Japanese puzzle boxes. Decorative candles. Children's books, heavily discounted. Unusual bags. Magnetic jewellery, which I like the look of, but don't want to go through the palaver of discussing with the vendor what the health benefits might be. Then there's the Fudge Kitchen stall, which merits a visit all by itself! They have fudge slices, drinking fudge - which I was interested in last year but never bought, so I was kind of obliged to this year! What's nice about there is you can choose which flavours to include in the box of drinking fudge.

There's plenty I missed, that I got to last year, but then I was in a hurry. I didn't see any demonstrations, of which there were some. I didn't have anything to eat, although there were plenty of stalls where I could have, and would have loved to. And I didn't get much of a chance to go around the fashion, which was also upstairs. But, you know, I had enough to carry when I was leaving that I could say I'd done it justice. And I made it to the airport in plenty of time.

So, nothing major planned for the weekend. Watch this space, something might happen. Won't go to anything Monday - I don't bother, when I'm travelling. For Tuesday, well.. I do hear a rumour that the Southbank Christmas market will be open by then, and it was lovely last year..