Recently my partner Emma and I went to the Ideal Home Show Christmas and the Cake and Bake Show at Olympia in London. It was a day out that really made us feel Christmassy!

We enjoyed wandering around the stalls, doing some festive shopping and taking in the atmosphere. With a choir singing Christmas songs and Santa wandering about, it was the perfect day out and left us feeling inspired.

There were talks and demonstrations on how to prepare for Christmas, how to choose the perfect turkey, and even a chance to blind taste Christmas pudding and vote for our favourite. Hilariously, the pudding Emma disliked the most turned out to be from the supermarket where she works! (The M&S Christmas pudding came out top, by the way.) We then tried some cocktails before heading home, full of festive spirit and laden with bags.

That same weekend we decided it was the perfect time to put up the Christmas decorations, with a soundtrack of festive music to get us even more in the mood. I was up in the loft searching through boxes and bringing things down to decide what we’d use this year, including the annual fun of untangling the lights. It turns out Emma has far more patience for that sort of thing than I do.

It was lovely getting the house ready for Christmas and looking through decorations that bring back memories. My mum still has a Christmas cracker decoration I made when I was four years old – amazingly still in one piece after all these years. It will be making its annual appearance on her tree again this year.

Baking is a big part of Christmas, and I’ve become known for the salted caramel brownies I make – delicious, if I do say so myself. Recently on social media I spotted Ellie Carey from Westfield, who has started a bake shed outside her house in Reed Street. She came to see me at Radio Woking and told me about her background in baking and how she needed something that fitted around her busy family life. The bake shed turned out to be the perfect solution.

Ellie takes suggestions from neighbours and spends Fridays baking, with the shed open at weekends (while stocks last). I love that she uses an honesty box system, and she says everyone has been honest so far – though she does have a camera on the shed just in case! She also appreciates that times are hard, so keeps her prices fair and affordable. Follow Ellie on Instagram: @ellies_cake_shed

Listen to my shows on Radio Woking on Sundays from 9am to 12pm and on Wednesdays from 7pm to 9pm. You can also hear Emma and me on Surrey Hills Community Radio every second Monday at 9pm, and Life on the Edge with Edge Disability Consultancy airs every first Monday at 10am. Feel free to send me a voice note via www.speakpipe.com/jonandrews or email me at [email protected]