I had promised myself that I would refrain from mentioning anything to do with Christmas before December 1st, but that was all before I was invited to take part in the John Lewis Secret Santa challenge. All good intentions have since gone out the window and I'm ready to embrace the Christmas spirit with both the bear and the hare (see the new John Lewis Christmas advert here).

It undoubtedly goes without saying that I'm a big fan of designer fashion, but buying designer items is something that I consider a once-in-a-while treat, rather than a daily luxury. Most of my actual clothes come from Mint Velvet the high street and fairly frequently from Sainsbury’s TU range. 

Following on from my last post I’m delighted to reveal the dress I received as part of the M&S Valentine’s Challenge and how I wore it while in London at the weekend. The dress that was chosen for me is this wonderful abstract floral print number from M&S’s Limited Collection. If you've seen some of my blog posts from last year, you’ll know already that I’m a HUGE fan of this particular collection, so I was especially delighted that my secret blogger chose this dress for me.

I was sat at my desk at work last week when an email popped into my inbox entitled ‘Marks & Spencer Valentine’s Challenge’, instantly intrigued I opened it up to see what it involved. M&S had decided to challenge 10 bloggers to a ‘Secret Santa’ style project to celebrate Valentine’s Day. As they put it “with Valentine’s Day taking place next week we want to encourage all the girls out there to embrace the day, whether single or in a relationship. After all, the day is about feeling special, right?”. I completely agree and regardless of the fact that I could be celebrating with my husband I’ll actually be spending Thursday evening with my entire family in London, something I’m very much looking forward to!

I was originally going to title this post ‘A Money Supermarket Christmas’, but worried that it would be misinterpreted to suggest that I opted to buy people car insurance as gifts this year. This post is actually the second in my #MSMSecretSanta series and I finally get to share with you the lovely gifts I received from 'The Girl About Town', aka Sarah.