I absolutely love Christmas.

I am the mum who annoyingly starts shopping in the January sales and loves every aspect of Christmas planning but it wasn't all that way...

As a child I had so many happy memories of opening my Christmas stocking! It was something me and my brother used to do just the two of us (often at 5am) before my parents woke up! If you ask your parents about their Christmas stockings they'd probably tell you they got some fruit and maybe some chocolates in there, it was never any thing that extravagant .

Now i know that everyone is Christmas traditions are different, everyone's budgets are different but here are my ideas for stocking fillers which are easily transferable to different ages,

My children are 7 and 12 and I have always done the same thing for stockings. We don't have a huge budget for stocking fillers , we focus on the presents under the tree and thats where our budget is focused. I don't want a stocking full of small plastic tatt that is going to be discarded after Christmas or clutter up their bedrooms so this is what we do.

First things first in my children's stockings they always get a new pair of Pjs, now whether they are 2 or 22 a new pair of PJs is never going to be an unwanted gift. They aren't Christmas PJs, they can be worn all year round, easily adapted to your child's interest or hobbies and I usually pick them up at some point during the year in the sales.

Secondly they always get a book, again this can be easily adapted to your child's ages and interests, so whether they love dogman or harry potter or true crime or would love a football annual a new book is always a welcome addition to a stocking in our house.

Thirdly- I totally shun selection boxes, far too much plastic, far too little chocolate so we go for a traditional chocolate Santa in ours. There's something just so magical about seeing a chocolate Santa sticking out the top , we usually just buy the aldi ones- no complaints - even my husband gets one haha! I'm actually thinking about adding an orange this year! Just for the vintage feels.

More recently I've started to include some socks in stockings, because again they are easily age transferable, Oliver has stitch ones this year and my eldest Jacob has some more of those Nike ones he loves, but seems to lose every 5 minutes. Again I look for offers and stock up when I can.

We also tend to include a new colouring book and pencils or a note pad or diary depending on age, now this is a personal one, growing up I am now (as an adult) fully aware that our stockings as a child we designed to keep up busy and quiet until a more reasonable hour where we could open our main gifts, therefore this one may buy you a bit of time to sip your coffee if you have younger kids.

To finish off our stockings we tend to include a few small practical gifts. For my eldest this year that will be some guitar pics ( as hes an avid guitar player and loses them daily so always needs more) and a lynx set as hes quite into his smellies this year plus preteens can be a bit wiffy can't they!?

For my youngest he has a small stitch logo type set (he loves lego and stitch) some stitch stickers (boy loves a sticker) and a novelty stitch pen - again brought cheaply throughout the year and thats it.

There is nothing in their stockings that is going to clutter up their rooms, there is nothing particularly extragent there but what they have got is a good mix of useful gifts (pjs, socks and smellies) a tasty traditional treat (with minimal wrapping), something to read, something tailored to their specific interests and something to keep them busy for a little while whilst i sip my coffee and try to feel more human.

Of course these are just my ideas but hopefully they may give you some ideas that you may find useful.