I was so excited about the hockey exchange, I live in the UK where hockey is field hockey and played mostly by women - and mostly in school PE lessons, nobody gets why I love ice hockey so much or cares about it.

But I grew up on the ice as a figure skater, and was always so jealous watching the boys learn hockey. I have a local team (Go London Raiders!) but the Blackhawks have my heart, for a series of complicated reasons I won't go into. Suffice to say, I was psyched for the hockey exchange.

Come matching day, I got a really fantastic giftee and had an awesome time finding some gifts for him. And I got the most amazing santa. Seriously. She kept sending me lovely messages and kept me completely up to date with what was happening, which was so nice.

And she sent me the most amazing gifts.

It really touched me to see the effort she'd clearly gone to to collect things I'd like, and each package I opened just made me more and more teary eyed. (Seriously, I love hockey. This exchange was a big deal to me.) And don't get me started on the hand made card, that was just too fantastic for me to deal with.

Anyway, inside the wonderfully wrapped gifts (check out the photos I've posted for full glorious detail, words don't do these gifts justice I promise you!!) was more Blackhawks swag than I could ever hope to own. It's really difficult to get your hands on anything over here, and that which will be shipped comes with truly outrageous shipping costs!

I'm now the proud owner of a fab Blackhawks t-shirt (which fits perfectly as a pyjama top, which is how I'm wearing it as games tend to happen at 1am for me!), a Blackhawks lanyard and keyring. It's particularly wonderful to have gifts that you love, relate to something you adore and are actually useful!

So thank you so much to my santa, it was a better exchange than I can possibly communicate.

I've been wearing the t-shirt when the Hawks play - I stayed up until 4am watching the game last night (damn time zones!!), and I'm pretty sure that the t-shirt is the reason we weren't eliminated.

Thank you.