The post-Christmas sales are under way, and there are some great deals on electrical goods, CDs, books and clothing in Asda stores and online.

There’s a Dyson vaccuum cleaner reduced from £150 to £100, a Sanyo microwave down from £54.97 to £40 and a Morphy Richards breadmaker down from £99.97 to £50, but stocks are limited so hurry if you want to grab a bargain.

There are also CDs for £5 including Paolo Nutini’s Candy, and best-selling books from £1, plus loads of other offers.

If you don’t fancy venturing out to the shops you can find loads of bargains online at Asda Direct.

Posted by Kevin on 26 December 2009, 14:57

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Don’t throw away your old Christmas cards – bring them into your nearest Asda store to recycle them instead.

Our card recycling scheme is raising money for Trees for Cities, a charity that works with local communities to plant trees and provide educational support for local schools and colleges.

You’ll find recycling boxes in Asda stores where you will be able to leave your old cards for collection.

Posted by Paul on 26 December 2009, 10:08

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Our home delivery teams have been pulling out all the stops to get customers’ vital Christmas groceries to them despite the snow and ice that has brought havoc to so many different parts of the UK.

We’ve been hearing stories of drivers getting stuck with their vans overnight – and one incident where a local search and rescue team helped make sure the turkeys, sprouts and other essentials got through to customers.

Home shopping driver Tony Gooding was delivering orders from the Asda store in Barrow-in-Furness when his van got stuck in Grange over Sands.

A lady out walking her dog saw he was in trouble and phoned her partner, who’s a member of the Bay Search and Rescue team, a voluntary organisation that provides support to coastguard, mountain rescue teams and other emergency services around the Morecambe Bay area.

Four members of the team arrived to pull Tony out – and he was able to complete the rest of his evening deliveries. The team posted this photo and others on Flikr.

Asda Barrow store manager Mike Hockney said: “We’re very grateful for their help and want to make a donation of £250 for their efforts in helping us ensure out customers got their deliveries last night.

“We just want to say a huge thank you to Mike Davis and his team for coming to help us out of a sticky spot. Without their help, we wouldn’t have been able to deliver the Christmas shop to waiting customers in Grange over Sands. Thanks to them, customers received their deliveries and our driver returned home safely. These guys are real unsung heroes.”

There have inevitably been some situations where it’s just been impossible to get vans through to customers – and we’re really sorry when that happens – but even then there are great examples of our customers and colleagues being resourceful.

more Posted by Peter on 23 December 2009, 12:41

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Peter Downey is the winner of our Christmas cracker joke competition – watch this video to hear his winning joke.

Peter, a PR and marketing consultant in Leeds, entered our competition on twitter. His joke will be printed in Asda crackers next Christmas and he and his family were given a special edition box of crackers as a sneak preview.

He plans to pull them with his family on Christmas day when he’ll be celebrating Christmas with his wife Gilly, son James, daughter Emma, mother-in-law Christine, Emma’s boyfriend Olly and Olly’s dad.

“I do tell a lot of jokes,” says Peter. “My family always groans at them – and this one is no exception!”

Posted by Trina on 22 December 2009, 18:44

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This colourful robin – painted by six-year-old Grace Knight from Maidstone in Kent – will be on sale as a Christmas card in Asda next year.

Grace was the overall winner of our competition on Your Asda to design one of four cards to be sold as a pack next Christmas.

Her mum Lucy said: “I can’t wait to see what happens to them. I was thinking of scanning and printing our own family christmas cards but now we’ll just have to get some from Asda!”

Three runners-up – Primrose Flower, 13, from Newbury, Berkshire, Kyle Masters, age eight, and Alys China, 11 – will also see get their designs turned into Asda Christmas cards. Alys’s mum Lucy China says: “It’s the best Christmas present she could have!”

Grace also received a £100 gift voucher and the runners-up got £50 gift vouchers.

Click on the gallery below to see all four winning designs:

Posted by TC on 22 December 2009, 18:19

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Our sprout suppliers are working flat out to ensure we’ve got enough sprouts to go round at Christmas.

This week Lincolnshire Field Products will be picking and packing enough sprouts to fill 3,264 Olympic-sized swimming pools for our customers.

Our loose sprouts are 100% British and available in all stores for £1.28 per kilo. However, they’re proving far more popular in some parts of the country than others.

Customers at our store in Longwell Green, Bristol, buy the most sprouts with 82,000 sold every week – that’s 11 for every adult and child living in the area – compared to some of our Scottish stores which sell just 5,000 a week.

Posted by Trina on 21 December 2009, 14:47

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We’re pulling out the stops to keep Christmas shopping queues as short as possible. As part of our £3 million investments, ground-breaking technology and taking on additional in-store teams to help customers cut congestion when they’re doing their Christmas shopping, we’ve also been looking at the best way to cut the queues.

We’ve had boffins analysing the best way to cut queues and they’ve come up with a simple but effective method – a big stick with a pointing hand on it. The ‘Queue Cue’ is now in all stores following a successful trial in our Wembley store. It acts as a traffic control management system – the hand helps guide customers to empty checkouts and the shortest queues.

Sarah Dickens, our retail people director, says: “It’s the busiest time of the year for Asda, and with this Christmas set to be the biggest in retail for over a decade, we’re pulling out all the stops to ensure that customers making a pit stop at Asda can get in, get round and get out of our stores as quickly as possible. As well as providing extra support for customers with car-park porters, on-the-spot runners and bag packers, our new Queue Cue means we’ll be in poll position for service this Christmas”.

With Christmas Day falling on a Friday this year our research team are predicting that 12:17pm on Wednesday 23rd December will be the busiest time in store. The team also predict that shoppers will be stocking up on pizzas, curries and take-aways to tide them over before the big feast on Christmas Day. Chris Carden, our food forecaster, said: “Customers don’t just want fast food in the Christmas week, they want fast service too”.

Posted by Simon on 20 December 2009, 11:37

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Christmas is the time of year when everyone likes to treat themselves which is why you’ll see plenty of adverts this week for our range of Extra Special food and drink.

Our chief exec Andy Bond talks about who people are trying to beat the recession by indulging in little luxuries at home this year in this SunTalk podcast.

And fortunately our Extra Special range won’t break the bank – it’s great value without compromising on quality. This week we started selling our Extra Special party food in store: you can now buy 12 Mini Chicken Pies for £3, a Mini Crostini Selection for £10, Scallop and Chorizo Skewers for £3 and Brie & Cranberry Filo Parcels for only £3 – all from our Extra Special range.

Halli O’Neill, who works in our food innovation team, talks about the range on her Aisle Spy blog and shares some trade secrets about how they get to be ‘extra special’. She was also at the Quality Food Awards ceremony last week where we picked up 11 awards and eight commendations for our food. The winning products from our Extra Special range were:

• Extra Special Exotic Conserve
• Extra Special Non Alcoholic Sparkling Muscat
• Extra Special Slowbaked Fruit & Oat Cookies
• Extra Special 2 Mini Mozzarella and Jalapeno Ciabatta
• Extra Special Coffee Cake
• Extra Special Italian Ham, Mushroom and Mascarpone Pizza

And in January our food innovation team start preparing our Extra Special products for next Christmas! Halli says one of the most important ingredients is inspiration – and she’s looking for your help.

What Extra Special products would you like to see? Tell us by leaving a comment below and you could help shape the range for next Christmas.

Posted by Mark on 17 December 2009, 12:48

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Our organic turkeys have been a focus for turkey rustlers in the past and so this year we stepped up security.

The prize birds at our suppliers in Norfolk – featured recently on ITV’s Anglia regional news – have been kept under constant surveillance to keep them safe from predators and opportunist thieves. For the past six months they’ve been allowed to roam free on organic meadows and pampered with regular baths, straw beds and toys to peck on such as CDs on strings, cabbages and sprout stalks.

Turkeys will be on sale in our stores from December 19th.

Posted by Kev on 15 December 2009, 15:39

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Santa has been busy visiting stores up and down the country and arrived at our Brighton Marina store in style.

Colleagues there won £1000 in a competiton to find the best way to bring Santa into store. They arranged for him to swap his traditional sleigh for a boat to the delight of customers and people living near the marina.

“It went down very well, not just with customers but with everyone at the marina,” says Customer Services Manager Gary Barnes. “People were hanging out of their windows waving and cheering.”

Santa then stepped into a waiting sleigh, accompanied by colleagues carrying paper lanterns, and did a tour of the local area before arriving at store to give out presents to our youngest customers.

more Posted by Pete on 07 December 2009, 13:45

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Our Christmas card competition for kids attracted plenty of colourful entries – have a look at some of them in our festive gallery below. Thanks to everyone who entered – the competition has now closed and we’ll be announcing the winners on this site shortly.

The overall winner will see their design turned into a Christmas card on sale at Asda next year as well as receiving a £100 gift voucher. Two runners-up will each receive a £50 voucher. Our festive buyer Liz Evison explains more about the competition in this video:

UPDATE: This competition is now closed. Thank you to everyone who entered. We will announce the winners on this site shortly.

The competition is being run in conjunction with UK Greetings – you can read the full terms and conditions here. The overall winner will go with the Asda team to our Christmas Card design studio where they will see their design turned into a Christmas card. The cards will then be sold in store next year. The winner will also get a £100 gift voucher to spend this Christmas. There will be two runners-up prizes of a £50 gift voucher.

Good luck and Happy Christmas!

Posted by TC on 03 December 2009, 19:52

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Treat yourself to smoked salmon this Christmas without breaking the bank – from today we’re selling whole frozen salmon for an amazing £3.

Our salmon is caught in the wild in Alaska from sustainable fishing sources and immediately frozen to preserve its taste and quality. It carries the Marine Stewardship Council label and is available in the majority (about 270) of our stores. If you’d like to check its availability before leaving home, try calling ahead – store contact details are in the store locator on the right-hand side of this page. You’ll generally find the salmon in-store on the end of a row near the party food.

Asda’s head chef Simon Shaw recommends adding salmon to your Christmas feast this year either as a luxury breakfast in a bagel with cream cheese or as a tasty starter.

Each of our frozen salmon weighs up to 1.2 kg and is big enough for at least eight people which works out an amazing 38p per head. This compares to £23.40 for a chilled whole salmon of the same weight from Selfridges’.

What will you be cooking for Christmas this year? If you’re trying something unusual leave a comment below.

Posted by Pete on 02 December 2009, 12:23

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George brand director Fiona Lambert appeared on ITV’s This Morning today to talk about our Christmas party wear and fashion trends this Christmas.

Fiona says sequins, metallics and sparkle will all be big this season. Two of our George outfits were modelled on This Morning’s catwalk in front of hosts Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby and stylist Jason Gardiner.

The first outfit showed off our little red prom dress teamed with a sequin jacket and hidden platform shoes:

Fiona says: “The jacket is perfect for covering up a party dress and looks equally great with a pair of skinny jeans.

“Red is also on trend next year so you can dig this dress out again for a summer wedding.”

more Posted by Trina on 01 December 2009, 13:54

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Andy Park, also known as Mr Christmas, has been celebrating Christmas every single day since 1994. He spends over £20,000 a year tucking into Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. Over the years he has clocked up 5000 Christmas days, eaten 5,475 turkeys, 100,804 Mince Pies, 5,475 Christmas puddings, 126,000 sprouts and pulled 219,000 crackers!

This year We’re helping Andy manage the cost of his everyday Christmas by launching our best value Christmas dinner which feeds a family of six for just £11. This works out at £1.83 a head which means Andy can make a massive £1,300 saving a month.

From today we will be delivering enough Christmas dinners to last Andy until Christmas Day. We’re also getting behind his new Christmas single which he has recorded with DJ Mike Reid, Slade’s Dave Hill, David Hamilton and Elliot Frisby. All proceeds of the single will go to The Shooting Star Children’s Hospice.

You can find out more details about the Shooting Star Children’s Hospice at www.shootingstar.org.uk

Posted by Paul on 29 November 2009, 08:00

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UPDATE: ENTRIES NOW CLOSED

We’ve teamed up with The Sun to find the UK’s best Christmas cracker joke writer.

The winner will have their joke included in Asda Christmas crackers in 2010 – and comedian Dave Spikey reckons the cornier the better.

He says Christmas cracker jokes are “designed to make you laugh and groan at the same time. In fact, it’s almost better to get a groan than a laugh from them.”

Here are a few of the entries:

more Posted by Kevin on 26 November 2009, 15:26

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