One of my blog goals this year was to become a brand ambassador for one of my favourite brands. And as we neared the end of 2017, I was convinced it wouldn’t happen.

But B&M Stores came through in the end – and I’m now super proud to announce that I’m an official B&M brand ambassador!

This is wonderful news for me of course. You see, I shop at B&M almost every weekend; I pick up a lot of my non-perishable goods in store including laundry and cleaning products, along with toiletries, tissues and kids’ treats and snacks.

Plus I love browsing the aisles and seeing what’s new in store as the seasons change. Let’s just say that many a bargain has been purchased at B&M.

So for my very first assignment, I was given £20 to see what Christmas goodies I could buy in store. I actually needed to buy both decorations and stocking fillers – and I managed to get both!

In fact, seven quality items for less than £20 isn’t bad going when you think about it – and here’s what I chose…

The stocking fillers

When I saw this Glitter Nail Stick in a ‘bargain bucket’ in one of the aisles, I knew I had to pop it in my basket. It was just £2.99 and the stick features 7 glitter nail polishes – Girlwrigher will be happy! And the great news is that once the nail polishes have been removed, you can use the stick to keep other bits and bobs – buttons, badges, sweets, paperclips….you name it, meaning that you get double value for money!

I also spotted a very festive box of McVitie’s biscuits mini packs. I thought it made a nice alternative to the selection boxes you can pick up, and the pack contains 11 packs including Iced Gems (a kids’ favourite), along with Gingerbread Men and Mini Cookies. I could hardly believe it when I saw it was just £1.79.

Another popular stocking filler was a box of Freddo Faces – it was £1 for 72g. And what’s great is that when you buy the box there’s a vouher code for kids under 15 to get free admission to Cadbury World with every full paying adult – not bad for a £1 – the usual child entry price is £11.68 when you book online!

And finally, I picked up something that pretty much any kid would love – a box of Jelly Beans. But these are not just any ordinary jelly beans; this is a Double Dares Game, featuring good and bad flavours mixed in each section. The object of the game is to take a spin and try one of the Jelly Beans – it’s either going to taste good or really, really bad.

As examples, you could be eating cola-flavoured jelly beans or cat-food flavoured! Or how about lemon-flavoured beans – or rotten cheese! It’s a great game for the kids to play with friends when they come over – and all for £1.99.

But be warned if you do buy this…have a glass of water on standby and expect lots of disgusted noises!

The decorations

B&M had a whole aisle of Christmas decorations to choose from, so actually I found it a bit tricky to buy mine – as I really could have done with most of them!

So what I thought I would do is to choose a door handle decoration, a front door decoration and then a wall decoration to get the balance right.

I picked up a lovely wooden Christmas-tree shaped decoration with a spotty ribbon and little hanging decorations of stars and bells. You could actually use it as a tree decoration, but I think it’s too lovely to get lost amongst the other tree decorations, so I much prefer to hang mine on the door handle.

What’s also good about the hanging tree apart from its price (just £1!), is the fact that if you really wanted to, you could paint it to match your colour scheme if you weren’t keen on its ‘au natural’ look. I prefer the wooden look myself as it matches some of my furniture, so I’m leaving mine as it is.

I also spotted this Jumbo Glitter bow – to add a luxury touch to your Christmas tree. But I’ve decided to use mine as a front door decoration rather than hanging a wreath (we like going against the norm in our household!). There were actually three different colours to choose from in store – silver, gold and a pale pink. I must have stood there for at least 10 minutes as I couldn’t decide between them!

In the end I went for the silver glitter bow, which was an absolute bargain £2.99. And like I said, if I get bored of it being on the front door, I could always use it as a tree topper – or even to decorate a HUGE Christmas present with!

Last, but not least – and my absolute favourite buy from my festive shopping spree was this Wooden Light Up Christmas frame featuring Father Christmas and some mini light bulbs – giving it the perfect retro look.

It takes two AA batteries and has a switch on the side of the frame to turn the lights on or off. You’d probably expect to pick it up for at least £15 if  you were buy it anywhere else, but B&M was selling it for just £7.99.

It lights up a corner of the living room beautifully – and I’m showing it off right next to the Christmas tree.

So, all in all I spent £19.75 for my super duper Christmas haul, which is an absolute steal. However, I do have a sneaky feeling that I’ll be back at B&M for more bargains. There was really cute wooden nutcracker soldier that I can’t seem to forget about!

Besides, I’ve already sussed out the perfect spot for him to go. All that’s left to do is free up the diary so I can get down there and nab him – before somebody else does!

You might also like…

• Christmas presents that offer that ‘Je ne sais quoi’ 
• My Colour of the year 2018 is Merry Berry

A pin for your gift or Christmas board!