Breakfast with Santa - 18 sleeps to go...

Yesterday we all headed to our local garden centre to have breakfast with Santa. This isn't something I had heard of before and it really appealed to me. The girls obviously still love to visit Santa (being only 6) but truth be told it is not that engaging for the rest of us. However, add in a full English breakfast and all of a sudden we are interested.

At our old house we always visited a garden centre on Christmas Eve to see Santa and then we would have a fry-up in the local cafe, as we have now moved and the old option is not feasible any longer, this is a wonderful alternative for us.

I'll let the photos do most of the talking as they really do speak a thousand words -

We arrived at the cafe to find the tables decorated for those who had booked. Crackers, hats, colouring packs and a candy cane each awaited the kids. The kids can enjoy as much squash as they fancy and we had a hot drink each (included in the price).

The food was really excellent, a good clean presentation and quality products. A big thumbs up!

Once breakfast was finished the manger started to whip the kids up into a frenzy, by chatting about Santa and jingling bells (which apparently Santa left last year) and he got the kids and adults all shouted for Santa to arrive with us.

The children were all invited up to choose a present with Santa, from oldest to youngest. Someone picked the cuddly dog that JJ fancies the staff went out of their way to find him one too.

Once the kids had their presents and our food was all finished, we assumed it would be time to go but it was a fantastic surprise to find that each of our children got given a really good sized gingerbread man, a little bag of icing and some decorations . They had the choice to decorate them there or take them home.

I think you can see that we all had a super time. The garden centre we visited was in Hastings and is fairly small but it was excellent. The Manager was at the front greeting everyone and telling them about the 25% off Christmas decorations promotion on that weekend, the manger in the cafe was welcoming, the food was exceptionally good (and we will be going back for sure), the toys that the children received were appropriate and fun to play with and I loved the fact I could take pictures of the kids with Santa for no extra cost.

This really was good old fashioned and down to earth fun. It was not big and glitzy but it really worked and at £9.99 per child and £7.99 per adult it was great value for this time of the year.

There are 139 garden centres within the Garden Centre Group and many of them are offering breakfast with Santa and there is a tea with Santa option too. I'd recommend this to anyone, we had such a super time.

I was pleased to find that there was a really good stock of Christmas decorations and seasonal gifts too.

Disclosure: We received this experience free of charge for the purpose of this review. I have not been instructed what to write and I remain honest.