Guest post: What to Get for Father’s Day

What to Get for Father’s Day

Understated, underrated – wholeheartedly Dad.

Father’s day is fast approaching, as usual it’s crept up on us amidst the chaos of school term time. Don’t fret, there is still plenty of time for you and the kids to get something meaningful for Dad this time round. For those of you still wondering – it’s Sunday, June 19^th.

Dads, universally – never seem to ask for anything, on any occasion. This makes them particularly difficult to buy for! Even if you know you’ve got him something truly awful, he’ll still smile wide and thank you lovingly for it. But not this year, we’re going to get him something he’ll really love. If you’re already stuck for ideas, have a look at some of the giveaways that have taken place on the blog, they always go down really well!

Boys will be boys, and there is no better example of this than seeing your son refuse to wear his coat on some of the rainiest days of the year. It’s no wonder where they get it from. Dads are effortlessly, infuriatingly cool. They’re the only person you know that could look that great in sandals, an otherwise eye-watering Hawaiian shirt and shorts. However, this often means that they underdress inappropriately for the muddy, rainy and snowy occasions – that’s where the kids learn it from. They want to be like Dad!

If he had a brand new comfortable sailing jacket it would mean no more damp car seats. He’d look fantastic when he meets his mother in law and there is always a chance the kids would follow suit and wear their coats at school. It would also free up the time we’d usually spend putting another wash on to get the damp out – leaving us to enjoy an extra glass of rose.

Image – https://pixabay.com/en/baby-child-cute-dad-daddy-family-22194/

Take him out for dinner. My other half is always so polite about where we go out to eat. As mums we’re always thinking about the kids. What time will we get back? How far away is it? Will they need a coat? Do they have any homework to do? He insists he “doesn’t mind what we eat” as he orders a goat’s cheese salad. Bearing in mind, this is the man that took you out for burgers on your first date!

Don’t be so quick to offload the children on your own parents though, remember its Father’s day for granddad too! Maybe there is a local restaurant that the whole family could enjoy. But remember, it has to be his choice this time. Even if the kids are there, express why we’re taking Dad out for dinner and how it’s respectful for them to behave on someone else’s special day.

They can still go wild on Father’s day cakes when you get home – if they’re not fast asleep in the back of the car that is!

We mums know better than anyone else how even the most meticulously planned days go horribly wrong. In which case, the above scenarios simply aren’t realistic. It might be best to spend the day inside and let him enjoy some gifts instead.

You know your other half best, of course. But here are a number of gifts that they might enjoy – depending on their personality.

Sporty

New football boots
Their favourite team’s football shirt – the new kits will be released soon!
A signed piece of memorabilia
Match day tickets for an upcoming game
A redeemable coupon that they can cash in for one free day at the pub with friends.

Musical

Put together a mixtape of his favourite tunes, throw a few sentimental ones in there too!
An iTunes gift card
Two tickets to a gig (you might have to offload the kids for this one)
A photo album of their favourite band.

Foodies

New carving cutlery
An iron cast pan – they last forever and are honestly incredible
A personalised apron
A selection of butchers cuts
A hamper of assorted craft beers and wines
An engraved hip flask

Geeky

A remote controlled quadcopter
Star Wars Blu-ray box set
A Game of Thrones bobble head for his desk at work
The Avengers Cufflinks
A great new book – I’ve done dozens of book reviews myself to help you out!

Fashionable

A new watch or watch winder
A gift card for the latest Nike shoes
A day for suit fitting at the local tailor.
Levi Jeans

That should be enough for the time being, we still have a month to prepare and we won’t forget, will we! Amongst the stress of daily life, bills, taxes and school runs it’s easy to forget the little things. But this is the man you want to spend the rest of your life with and whose experiences will shape the future of your children. I’m sure the children will remember how far a well thought out gift goes when it comes to them buying Father’s day gifts on their own.

Guest post by Will Chivers of ThoughtShift.

Personalised Gift Solutions review and giveaway

Two weeks to go until Father’s Day. And we’ve now got an extra gift ready for Dad. This time it is a personalised bar of milk chocolate, which we received free to review from Personalised Gift Solutions.

Their website including checkout was easy to navigate. We chose what words to personalise both the front and reverse of the chocolate bar wrapper. There is a generous limit on the number of characters, upto 10 for the banner, plus upto 20 below. You can choose upto three lines of 20 characters each on the reverse, although we opted for two lines only. It doesn’t have to be for Dad. Perhaps you might wish to send one to Grandad.

The chocolate retails at £6.95 for a 100g bar, with free delivery in the UK. Obviously you can get a standard bar of chocolate in the supermarket much cheaper, but you’re paying for the personalisation. A nice gift in my opinion.

I can’t tell you what the chocolate tastes like yet! We’ve hidden it away until Father’s Day. It looks very tempting though and I am a fan of Tatty Teddy.

The product was shipped 5 days after placing the order, but that did encompass the Bank Holiday weekend. It was well packed and there was a fragile label on the reverse of the package. However I don’t think my postman had spotted it, as he had posted the chocolate through the letterbox.

Let me tell you about some of the other Personalised Gifts they sell. There are more Me to You Tatty Teddy products, a great range of Disney Books, Football gifts and lots more. They are a new small family run business specialising in creating and selling high quality personalised gifts.

Do take a look at their full range of Personalised Gifts. There is plenty of choices to suit everyone.

A few of the personalised Disney books

And I’m hosting a rafflecopter competition to giveaway a personalised Disney book courtesy of Personalised Gift Solutions to one lucky winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway – Please click on the link to enter.

And you may see my other giveaways here.

I’d love to hear what Personalised Gifts you would choose?

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Disclosure. This post is a review of a product I was sent for free. All opinions are my own.

Snapfish personalised gifts review and giveaway

We’ve decided to do something a little bit different for Father’s Day gifts this year. The boys have drawn pictures for Dad which I then uploaded to Snapfish for them. We used their designs for the front cover of a notebook each for them to give Dad. They are going to add a couple more pictures to the inside of the notebooks too.

It was very simple to set up an account with Snapfish and to upload images and photos. However both boys’ drawings were landscape and out of the 39 notebook designs, which I know sounds a lot, there were very few that both worked with a landscape image and were acceptable to the boys. Blossom, petals and pink were all ruled out.

Blue Simplicity got their vote, but in order to vary them, we did son1’s as a Full Photo instead, but with the notebook rotated so the spiral is at the top. So let’s hope Snapfish add a few more male orientated designs to the notebook range, especially as notebooks are featured when you drill down on ‘shopping for him’.

All the notebooks currently retail at £5.99 but it doesn’t state the dimensions. You can select either lined or blank paper.

We’ve also used a photo for a Father’s day card. I was amazed at the wide selection of cards in this category, a staggering 230 of them. Some of them are for other male relatives. I wanted to filter them down before showing to the boys for selection, but although there seemed plenty of filters, the only one that helped was to filter down by number of photos. We had already chosen one photo for the card. This filter reduced our results to 155. I was hoping that the by orientation filter would apply to the photo, but no it applied to the card. So instead I reminded the boys that we had chosen a landscape photo and they looked at about the first 20 before choosing.

They changed the background from brown to blue and added Happy Father’s Day text to the inside of the card. We also had the option of adding text to the front and back, rotating the text and adding more photos to the inside or back. And we could have chosen to have the card posted directly to the recipient.

This design of card currently costs £2.99 but most of the cards are £2.49 with a few at £1.99.

And finally I chose a selection of our favourite recent photographs for a set of 6 placemats. Again it doesn’t state the dimensions. These currently cost £24.99 for 6. They can also be purchased individually or in pairs.

The items were dispatched separately. The notebooks arrived first amazingly quickly, less than 36 hours after I placed the order. The boys were very pleased with them and have squirrelled them away to add extra drawings and messages prior to Father’s Day. And I was glad to see that they were a good size, namely A5.

Then two days later, two more packages arrived. The card looked great and I was very pleased to see on the back that 15p of the purchase price goes to Macmillan Cancer Support. I hadn’t picked up on that when ordering.

And as for the mats, wow, they look amazing and should make a good talking point at the table. Size wise, they are 19.5 by 23.5 cm. All three packages were well packed.

We are very pleased with our Father’s Day purchases from Snapfish and recommend that you take a look. Please note that the last order date for Father’s Day is 15 June 2015.

And I’m hosting a rafflecopter competition to giveaway a £40 Snapfish voucher to one lucky winner. What a great prize.

a Rafflecopter giveaway – Please click on the link to enter.

And you may see my other giveaways here.

I’d love to hear what you would choose from Snapfish?

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Disclosure.  I received a voucher to purchase items from Snapfish.  All opinions are my own.