Getting Personal This Christmas Review

Reviewed by Louise Totton

If there’s one thing that most kids love (or at least most of the kids that I know), it’s presents that are especially for them. A gift with their name on, or something that is specifically ‘for them’ will always go down well in our house, be it a bookmark or books that have a character with their name in it. With Christmas coming up, Getting Personal have a fantastic selection of gifts and accessories that can be personalised for the special little (and not so little!) people in your life. We were lucky enough to be asked to review some of Getting Personal’s Christmas range and the kids were more than happy to help out!

Choosing just a few products from the website was no mean feat – the range on the website certainly is extensive and there will be something for everyone in the Christmas range. The range includes everything from personalised gifts for baby’s first Christmas to Christmas jumpers, presents for foodies and those who love gardening, travel or a little tipple, and all personalised especially for the recipient. Having said that, we love a challenge in our house, so when I gave the kids the brief of choosing something for Christmas Eve, a decoration, something for their bedroom plus a free choice each, they really rose to the challenge! The items we chose were:

• Luxury Red Christmas Sack
• Shining Star Christmas Decoration
• Shining Snowflake Christmas Decoration
• Alphabet Letter Cushion
• You’re Fabulous Unicorn Cushion
• Christmas Taster Sweetie Jar
• Kapow Personalised Notebook

Ordering from the Getting Personalised website is a complete doddle. The website is laid out really clearly, allowing you to choose your gift either by recipient or by gift type. Personalising the items couldn’t be easier, and it is done on the order page before adding the item to your basket, which is great because when you’ve finished your shopping, you have a basket full of personalised items all ready to go – no additional steps.

The item that my youngest daughter was keenest to get her mitts on was the personalised sweetie jar – no great surprise there! This cute little sweetie jar is personalised with the phrase (NAME)’s Christmas Sweet Collection on a festively coloured and themed label. At just £12.99, I thought it was great value for a child like mine who loves her sweeties. This is a proper (plastic) sweetie jar, stuffed full of retro sweets and with a proper screw top lid so your child can’t try to convince you that they need to eat all of their haul in one sitting!

I loved that the sweets in the jar are proper, branded sweets that I remember from my childhood and the selection is fantastic. The jar includes Parma Violets, Drumstick Lollies, Fizz Wizz and Candy Sticks as well as my daughter’s long-time favourites, Refresher Chews. I think the personalised sweetie jar makes a lovely change from the standard selection box and my daughter already has plans for her sweetie jar once she’s emptied it – she’s going to use it to keep all of precious trinkets and ultra-rare Shopkins in. I love how the personalised aspect of this makes it something that she wants to keep for ever, and stops it being single-use plastic that is binned once the sweets are eaten.

My eldest daughter is a bit mad on superheroes at the moment, so she was really excited about her personalised Kapow Notebook, which is a truly individual notebook. The cover of the book is blue and features KAPOW and THWAKK shout outs that are very reminiscent of the Batman series from the 1960s, with the central shout out featuring the recipient’s name. The notebook is available in a wide range of configurations so you can create the perfect book for you – you can choose either an A5 or A4 book before deciding if you would like it in hard back or softback, choosing either lined or plain paper and finally deciding if you would like a gift sleeve too.

Costing between £7.49 and £13.49, these books are absolutely stunning and my daughter loved hers. The books are spiral bound which I always prefer as you can tear the pages our more easily if you make a mistake and we find it helps to keep such a gorgeous and much loved product in great condition without bending the cover or the pages. The quality of both the cover and the paper is excellent and I think this is a lovely present that will sit on her desk for a long time to come.

My daughters also chose a cushion each from the range to go in their bedrooms. My eldest chose a grey letter A-shaped cushion whereas my unicorn-mad youngest went for their You’re Fabulous Unicorn Cushion.

The Letter A cushion is a properly shaped letter A, which we thought was really quirky and something a little bit different. It is really soft and a slightly fluffy, fleecy material with the front of the A having a lovely but subtle grey and white star pattern and the sides being a complementary darker grey. There’s no zip or fastening as the cushion doesn’t have a removable cover, so it’s wipe-clean only. Having said that, because it’s for the bedroom, that’s not a problem at all! For £14.99, I think this is a great value item and the muted colours mean that it will work with most colour schemes and decors.

The You’re Fabulous Unicorn Cushion is slightly more expensive at £19.99 but we think it’s worth it! This cushion can be personalised with any name (up to 12 characters), which is great especially for kids with unusual names or unusual spellings. The image on the cushion is gorgeous and is every little girl’s dream – it has a lovely ombre purple and turquoise background with a super cute rainbow unicorn surrounded with stars on the front, along with (NAME) You’re Fabulous printed in white.

The cushion is a great size (40cm x 40cm) and because it’s a zippable cushion with a removable inner, it can even be machine washed. My daughter is really taken with the unicorn design on the cushion, so I was really pleased to see that there is a large selection of products in the Unicorn range on Getting Personal’s website; I have no doubt that she will be adding more of these lovely products to her Christmas and birthday lists so she can really unicorn-ify her bedroom!

The girls also chose themselves a Christmas decoration each for the tree. There are absolutely loads to choose from on the website, so narrowing down their selection took a bit of doing but in the end, they actually both chose very similar designs. My eldest went for the personalised Shining Snowflake decoration and my youngest opted for the Shining Star.

These are both made from mirrored acrylic (a kind of plastic) and are available in mirrored gold, mirrored silver or mirrored bronze finishes. With a diameter of approximately 7cm, there’s plenty of room for most names (up to 10 characters) and they are chunky enough to be pretty visible on the tree. The mirrored finish reflects the light beautifully, and I have no doubt that they’ll look absolutely wonderful with twinkly fairy lights shining on them.

Because they are acrylic, they also feel pretty robust, so I can well see them lasting for an awful long time and would think they would be great for families with younger children who might be a little less than careful around the tree. They are great value for £8.99 each for a shiny and engraved, personalised decoration that I’m sure will be used for years and years.

The final item that we were sent to try out was their personalised, luxury Red Christmas Sack. When I was growing up, I used to really look forward to my Christmas Sack in the morning, but ours were made of plastic and were single-use bags that my mum would use a marker pen to pop my name on. These ones are nothing like that and are a stunning bag that would no doubt be used year after year.

Made from luxurious and high-quality red fleece, they have a fluffy white top and are closed with a pompom-ended white drawstring – incredibly festive and great fun to dive into on Christmas morning. They’re a great size at 64cm x 47.5cm, so Santa will be able to stuff plenty of pressies into them and we think they are thick enough with good stitching so they will hold plenty in there without literally busting at the seams. The quality of this item is great and we are all really delighted with the sacks; they’re not wrong when they describe them as a luxury option.

The sacks are personalised with silver text which can include up to 10 characters, plus a star on the top. We have had the girls’ names printed on them and they have been delivered to the house ready for us to post off to Santa with their Christmas lists. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to manage posting the sacks off to the North Pole as yet, but we’ll come up with something and I think it could be the start of a lovely Christmas tradition.

We have been bowled over by some of the lovely, individual and personalised items on Getting Personal’s website, and it’s not just stuff for the kids either. There are some gorgeous options for the whole family, from the very young to the older members of the family and from small stocking fillers up to bigger and more substantial gifts. And one thing’s for sure – because the gifts are personalised, it wont matter how much you spend, because the recipient will know you chose it especially for them and it will be one of the most special gifts they receive this year.  

For more information or to find your own personalised gifts, visit www.gettingpersonal.co.uk.