Link to Hope
The suggestion on the Link to Hope calendar for February is to concentrate on gifts that are on the theme of heat and light. ‘Items to bring hope and light to people’s lives – candles and holders, hot water bottles, torches, socks and tights.’ If you are filling one or two shoeboxes then buying a scented candle already in a holder might be the cheapest option. Dunelm still have some reduced to 50p which you can click and buy and pick up at your local store. There have only been a couple of different scents available, and my local store now only has one scent in stock but at 50p for a 29 hour burn time it’s good value. Dunelm do have several other scents available at the full price of £1.00 which is still good value.
Alternatively, Ikea have a smaller Adlad scented candle in a jar for 75p which has a 12 hour burn time and several options for £1.00 with a 20 hour burn time, or the Enstaka is reduced to £1.00 and has a 50 hour burn time, but it’s not available at my local store.
The other option is to add tea lights and one or two holders. Ikea have large bags of tealights as do Asda, but the burn times vary so bear that in mind. Ikea have some scented tealights reduced to £1.00 for 30 tealights each with a 3.5 hour burn time. Their Tilvaro tealights are 100 for £3.50 with a 2.5hr burn time, or Glimma are 50 for £3.50 or 100 for £4.00 both with a 4hr burn time – if you can afford the extra 50p go for the pack of 100 😊.
Empty glass dessert containers make good tea light holders. The best ones I’ve found are Pots & Co plant -based desserts containers which have a flat internal base and higher sides which protect the flame more than shallow dishes. (Also gives you an excuse to have a dessert – though they are hard to find at the moment😊). Gu pots as easy to come by but do have a concave base which means the tea lights don’t sit flat. Ikea have several different options for tea light holders with the Finsmak sold singly for 50p, or Glasig is a pack of 5 for £1.50 or Galej which have higher sides and can be used for votives is £1.25 for a pack of 4.
Thank you to Mags for the heads up about hot water bottles on sale at Dunelm. They had small covered hot water bottles for £2.50 which are great for fitting into shoeboxes 😊.
I’ve also purchased a couple of small hot water bottles from Temu but they aren’t like standard hot water bottles and I haven’t tried them out yet which I want to do before adding them to a shoe box. The prices vary but one cost £1.78 and the other was £2.25.
I’ll try and get a clearer image of the filling area of the Temu hot water bottles. They don’t seem to have the daisy symbol showing when they were manufactured.
I haven’t found any real bargains for wind up torches, but Amazon have some Rolson wind up torches for £3.50 which seem to last quite well. I’ve had one for over 5 years that I still use. The Range have similar looking ones for £3.99. Temu have some hand crank ones for £2.24 but the prices change constantly. Ebay and Amazon as usual have sellers being misleading advertising 3 LED wind up torches for £7.00 or more and picturing 3 torches, but you only get one torch which has 3 LED bulbs! If you are buying as part of a group Amazon does have a genuine multibuy of 24 hand crank torches for £35.00 which works out at less than £1.50 each.
My best buy for socks has been Temu – again prices alter each day but the ones I’ve bought have worked out at between 14p – and 26p a pair.
Poundstretcher have 3 pairs of men’s sports socks for £1.00. Asda have 7 pairs of children’s socks in black or white for £2.50, 7 pairs of ladies’ trainer socks for £3.50 or 7 pairs of men’s ankle socks for £4.00.
This month’s bargains.
My local What! stores have closed, but a trip to Wales gave me the chance to go in one of the stores there. I got a couple of hairbrushes for 89p each and some fold up hair brushes and mirrors for 79p which I find useful to put in smaller shoeboxes as they take up less room. I also got a 6 pack of A5 lined exercise books for £1.00 as well as a plain 100 page jotter block for £1.00 (I’m finding it harder to get A5 Plain paper drawing pads) I need to try some of Mags suggestions for making your own. My other bargain was a small truck for 50p.
One Beyond had their pack of 36 diecast racing cars for £5.00 so I bought a box of those to divide up between boxes. (It’s in an area I don’t go to very often but it’s now my closest store – and a case of buying them while they’ve got them.)
My other bargains have all been from Temu, – Round folding hairbrush and mirror for 50p each, small handbag size hairbrushes for 71p each, folding comb and hairbrush 58p, Ladies large 90cm headscarves 83p each, braided belt 78p, pack of 3 nail clippers for 68p, 10 small toy cars £1.37, 3 pack of dark green beaded bracelets 68p, and small glasses repair screwdrivers 16p each and a pack of 10 toothbrushes with covers for £1.16 and some strange beanie hats that you can put your hand through for 71p each (when they are on they do seem to cover the top of your head!).
Tesco still have the individually wrapped bars of soap for 30p so I’m buying some each time I go in 😊. Till next month.