Good luck at university Eleanor

Today we went to a BBQ party to celebrate our cousin Eleanor going off to uni. When her brother went last year, we made him a box of goodies to take with him. A kind of a Red Cross parcel of things he might need and also a fair few embarrassing things in there too. I'm sure he really appreciated opening them in front of his whole family!

This year we were slightly nicer to his sister and packed her up with some hopefully quite useful things as well as only a couple of embarrassing things.

Duvet cover - for John (her brother) we got a periodic table set as he was doing Chemistry. Eleanor is going to do environmental studies so this one was the most educational set we could find. Hopefully she will never be stuck with this definition in an exam.

The tratditional giant bottle of vodka of course had to be included. We also packed some chocolates for sharing with her friends when she arrives, shot glasses and mugs (she needs something to drink the vodka out of!) and of course the traditional student medication-flu relief to combat freshers flu, pro plus to stay up all night studying and painkillers for when the night before might have got a little bit too messy. There needed to be a little soap etc thrown in there as well.

A decent start with some packet food, soup, pasta etc and of course the plastic cultery. Always usefull when you can't be bothered to wash up!

She has decided that she will mostly be eating vegetarian food while she's away so we were slightly limited on what we could pack for her. I did however notice the other day however that a bag of smoky bacon flavoured Frazzles that I was eating happen to be vegetarian. A bag of these had to go in on top of a load of stationary for her just in case she is missing that bacon-y taste and smell.

Once it was all packed into the box we thought we should really try to make it look like a proper Red Cross parcel. We printed out some signs to put on the outside of the box

As well as a full contents list of the box

All were stuck to the outside of the box and it was all taped up ready for to go this morning.

I think Eleanor seemed to like the box and its contents. We really did go light on her and managed to not really embarrass her at all. I think one of her favourites was definitely the hat

The big bottle of vodka didn't go down too badly either.

The duvet cover is looking like it will be educational already. I think her bother was pointing out how useful the plastic cutlery would be in this photo too.

Really good luck at uni Eleanor. We hope you have a great time and do plenty of studying too.