Christmas Gift Guide With The Home Genie
This is my Christmas gift guide. If you can’t view the video, please click here.
All I want for Christmas is…
Obviously Christmas is my favourite time of year and I was just wrapping up some presents for my family and realised a lot of them are home related (surprise surprise).
So I thought I’d share my gift ideas with you as I have some really good finds this year.
Blinking marvellous
First of all for my dearly beloved husband, I came across the Blink smart home security camera system. So the lucky boy has two cameras to play with coming his way.
The first is for indoor use, the other is the Blink XT, which is for both indoor and outdoor use.
He has been allowed to open them early, just so we could see what the set up was like. Astonishingly it took less than 10 minutes to do everything, including downloading the software.
The camera is battery-powered (and they come with the batteries) – so no unsightly wires. You can either wall mount them or simply stand them on a surface, so there’s no fuss.
The Blink system also comes with cloud storage. It keeps any clips that it records for a period of time, which you can set, or when you run out of cloud storage it deletes the oldest clips.
Video it
The video quality is excellent by the way. The indoor camera lights up in the dark and the outdoor camera has night vision.
The software on the phone is really easy to use, and allows you to schedule when the camera is activated (for example overnight).
Of course, you can turn it on and off via your phone (remotely) when you want. You can also live view via the cameras from your phone at any time and it works with Alexa.
You can control what alerts you get, and various other aspects of the system from your phone, and the camera can even monitor for temperature changes (a basic check for fire perhaps).
There are no subscription fees. You need one “Sync module” per system set up, but the system is very cost effective to add additional cameras if you wish to monitor more areas of the house.
So altogether this is really good value for money and a brilliant gift for any gadget lover.
Bottle it
Now my stepfather loves a bottle of wine and is also very into recycling. So this rechargeable bottle light from Suck UK is the perfect stocking filler for him.
Basically you place it into an empty bottle (and there are a lot of empty bottles in his house!) and it turns it into an instant table light. So simple, but you could get some really lovely effects with these.
Paint it
This gorgeous gift box from Annie Sloan is also worth checking out. I got this from my local shop Dovetails Vintage.
They have produced this in conjunction with Charleston. It’s a carefully selected set of three chalk paints and you get the wax too. So it’s just enough to do a chair or small item of furniture.
The set is inspired by the Bloomsbury group of artists and there’s a beautiful book you could add as well which gives them a few ideas.
So that’s a great gift for my niece.
Tidy it
We all need a little bit of tidiness in our lives, particularly when it comes to the bedroom. So I was really pleased when I came across this stocking filler. It’s a bedside pocket from Kikkerland.
Bits and pieces can pile up next to the side of the bed and it’s not great for your sleep. This pocket will help to keep clutter tidy and probably give you a better night’s kip as a result. So that one is going to my mum.
My grandmother is a very classy lady, but she is very difficult to buy for. If you missed my video and post about Original-Art-Under100.com it’s worth a look for present ideas. It’s a website where you can buy original art by some amazing artists for under 100 quid, so very affordable.
If your loved one has everything, check out my post and video on the wine cooler I gave my husband recently – it’s been a gift to remember (unless you drink the contents!).
I hope my Christmas gift guide has helped you and that you have an AMAZING crimbo.
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I use blink cameras, they are very good plus they have audio !!
Thanks Doug – yes, audio too. They’re really pretty smart little things aren’t they!
Great ideas, thanks Georgina and I love the painting
Thanks Stuart – yes, the painting is lovely isn’t it. Such a bargain!