Christmas Eve
Let the magic of Christmas begin – after spending 23 days creating and preparing for Christmas I am ready to relax and enjoy…..spending time with my family – hopefully, by the time you read this I will be at our destination!
To all my lovely readers and fellow bloggers, I wish you a very Happy Christmas. xx
Christmas Eve boxes and Christmas presents
There is nothing quite so magical than a gift that is wrapped and waiting to be opened.
I have often thought it would be nice to afford to use those expensive gift wrapping services found in large department stores. It is always quite a time consuming activity, but I do like to spend time wrapping my gifts, though I am not very good at it, unless it happens to be in a box. I buy large white tags for the grandchildren and some of those sticky Christmas pictures, then write who it is to and from in large letters.
They have a small gift each from granny and grandad as we take them all to the pantomime as part of their Christmas present. I usually print down a picture of the panto we are going to, stick it on a card and make a voucher to give them.
The little gifts I bought for my two daughters are carefully wrapped in tissue and I would normally place them in their stockings, but this year’s gifts are rather too large and I had to buy a gift bag to use instead. After going from shop to shop I failed to find one that was just the right size and have had to make do with what I could get, never mind….. I am sure they will like the contents just as much. To go with these little bits and pieces I picked up some lovely gold pillar candles in Sainsbury’s in their ‘seasonal’ clearance sale for £1.88. I bought one for myself too as they seemed such a bargain.
Our family have been doing a Secret Santa for many years now – although we call it our ‘Not so Secret Santa’ as we each produce a wish list for the person buying the gift for us – though we have no idea what the person will choose from the list so it is almost a secret!
Our Secret Santa gifts have been carefully wrapped – DH was buying a gift for our younger daughter and my Secret Santa is for my mum. I got her two pairs of pyjamas (though the medium, supposedly size 12-14, do look very large to me), a Hamish Macbeth mystery book and a bar of ginger chocolate.
We began Christmas Eve boxes when Little L was young and of course there are four children now. I buy them each a pair of Christmas pyjamas, this year it is white tartan for the boys and red for the girls. I also put in a small Christmas craft for them to do (either from The Works or Hobbycraft), a puzzle or game and my elder daughter adds in a book.
So on Christmas Eve there is plenty to keep them occupied and of course they can’t wait to get into those pyjamas early.
Master Freddie made these crackers himself for the boxes ages ago, in fact I bet he has forgotten all about them. I managed to poke a Santa chocolate in through the end for good measure.
Of course, there will be the cake to add the decoration to when we all arrive at my younger daughter’s house tomorrow. She will be making us a very simple tea of baked potatoes, cheese and beans – feeding a house full of 10 people with four hyper children will not be easy. I am hoping we will all get to a nearby church crib or Christingle service at some point.
We like to play a game together on Christmas Eve with the children, and this year I have got a Christmas Jigsaw – only 50 pieces so they can all join in. I always wrap the game and at some point between teatime and bedtime DH will sneak outside by the back door without anyone noticing, go around to the front door, ring the doorbell and leave the ‘present’ on the doorstep with a tag saying ‘from Santa’s Elves’. Of course all the grown ups say ‘I wonder who that can be?’ and the children rush to open the door and are amazed to find a present on the doorstep – another magical moment for the grandchildren.
And once again, another day over and another day closer….and time for bed. There will be a lot to pack in the car tomorrow – DH will not know if he is coming or going, and there might be a few strong words as the time ticks away and, as often happens, we should be on the road but are still running round attending to last minute bits and pieces.
There is always that long list of questions going through your mind, you may know the ones – did you turn off the shower room fan?, adjust the heating controls?, put my slippers in the car?, remember the nut loaf from the freezer? and most importantly, have we got all the presents?
And after all that, and many check lists there will always be something we have overlooked.
Back soon x
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The Christmas tree
I can hardly believe it is day 22 today and I still have a few tasks left to do; just little things, but don’t little things always take the most time.
Thank you, for all the kind comments, any helpful suggestions always welcome here!
I couldn’t write each day about all the things that make a Christmas, without including the Christmas tree. I would think it is the one thing that most people have at Christmas even if they have no other decorations.
DH and I decided against a real one this year. It is only the second time in our 49 years of marriage (soon to be the big 50). The other time, was last year when we were so busy at home after spending so much of the year selling our cottage, we just didn’t have any energy left to go out and buy one, so we rummaged in the loft and found a very ancient IKEA one that my daughter left behind when she moved out.
It has made an appearance again this year. We will be away for Christmas so in a way it made sense. It has been patiently waiting in the corner of our living room for Master Freddie to come and decorate it, and I must say he made a fine job, though my heart was in my mouth a few times when I heard the chink of my delicate, glass vintage baubles (some of which must be as old, if not older, then me.
He insisted we had a star on top, and not one of the angels we usually have.
So we made a star from some gold glittery card. It might be the only thing I might swap out, when he is not looking, as I do like my little fluffy angel.
After the tree we attempted to put the marzipan and icing on the cake. I only do the top in a flat ready to roll fondant and then cheat a little round the sides, with one of those old fashioned paper frills.
With the left over scraps Freddie made a snowman. I think he did very well, and managed to get most of the black icing onto the snowman and not himself (though he did go home quite a shade of pink from a red felt tip pen he had used for doing some colouring)
The snowman will no doubt take his place amongst the rest of the cast when all the grandchildren get together on Christmas Eve to put the decorations in place on top of the cake. It has become quite a tradition over the years, and this year all four of them will be giving a helping hand. Each year, the same Christmas characters are placed on the cake, but all end up in different positons to the year before. They have great fun doing this and it saves me a job.
This picture below is one of the previous years – as you can see it gets a little crowded some years, but I just love their creativity. I have bought a new Santa this year as the old one is looking rather jaded now and I hope the snowmen aren’t too worried about the new snowman on the block.
Just as I had my hands on the rolling pin today I had a call…not from mum this time, but her main carer. It appears that mum has a crack in the toilet seat on her commode and although the carer had mentioned it to my sister two weeks ago, it had been overlooked. Not surprising as my sister has just been moving house. I had no idea which body provided the commode when she returned to her own home from the care home two years ago. A quick call to social services at Teeside and I was given a number for Community Equipment Services ( commode department) ….no just joking there!
They will send one out tomorrow – quite a Christmas present for mum – not sure who the lucky person will be though that has to fit the new seat – I rather think it could be DH on Boxing Day. I won’t tell him, might spoil his Christmas.
I spoke too soon about mum. I had a call at 4.45am . Like most people I was fast asleep and being rather disorientated at the rude awakening, I didn’t get to answer quick enough, so it went to voicemail and mum left a message. I thought something terrible had happened, and it had according to mum…firstly, she was irrate that it was ‘leave a message’ which she hates and then said perhaps I could tell her if Vera was on TV tonight. I rang her straight back and told her the time, she hadn’t realised it was the early hours and said she must have fallen asleep straight away when the carer put her to bed and left a 7 o’clock.
I am hoping for a better night tonight.
I will leave you all with another picture of the Advent calendar as most of the windows have now been opened and it is looking much more colourful.
Once again, I am just in time to post this before I fall exhausted into my bed. Tomorrow, is the last serious attempt to get everything done and ready, and will include some packing (something I have done very little of this year), so I might be a tad rusty.
With the Christmas tree in place, joyous carols singing away in the background, the cards made and in the post, the cake iced and the handmade gifts delivered, tomorrow, will also be the last of my creating Christmas posts – so what could go wrong so close to the finish….mum perhaps?
Back very soon x
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The handmade gifts, part 2
It has been like Santa’s factory here today. I finally made the last of the gifts and today it was the gingerbread stars. It sounded quite easy, but in fact because my mind kept wandering I made a few mistakes here and there; nothing too drastic that couldn’t be fixed, but annoying all the same.
Instead of getting the ready roll gingerbread again I decided to make my own as I wanted it to be more gingery than the bought one….my first mistake – even though I added more ginger than the recipe, I still think I could have added more.
As always with my gifts I have a vision in my head of what I want the final result to be. I must say halfway through I thought it might all be going wrong but in the end I think they turned out close to what I had in mind. You will see the finished results below.
The first step was to cut out hundreds of small stars (well not quite, but it seemed like it at the time). Even this was tricky trying to keep their shape and stop them looking like starfish with wonky points.
I cooked the first batch to the times the recipe stated but I thought they were a bit too crisp and I wanted them a little softer. So I reduced the cooking time for the next batch to 8 minutes and that did the trick.
The next step, once cooled, was to dip in dark chocolate…
….then add some pretty gold sprinkles.
A second batch was dipped in white chocolate….
…..and a few had white chocolate laced over the top.
Once dry, I carefully filled one of the lovely Christmas glasses I had bought specially from Sainsbury’s.
…and repeated three times…
Packaged in cellophane, added a tag and voila!
So now my gifts to my friends are complete: one calendar of local scenes, and a glass filled with gingerbread stars.
Tomorrow, I will deliver them and I can turn my attentions, once again, to the final bits and pieces. Master Freddie will be coming Monday or Tuesday, so all the presents will have to be hidden from sight again.
Mum managed to ring a few times today when I had my hands full of sticky gingerbread dough. She times it well! She doesn’t seem to able to grasp the fact that it will be Christmas in a few days time and also asks over and over if we will be going up on Christmas Day. We have been round it all so many times, and not only me, but so have the carers, and I daresay my sister will have had the same questions.
On the whole though she has been remarkably good in the last few days and there have been minimal phone calls from her. The worst one being her call for help as she had lost the sound on the TV whilst watching Sense and Sensibility. She had obviously pressed the wrong button on the remote as it had changed programs and she had got Shrek on the screen suddenly. Even mum knew the difference! Trying to talk her through the steps to get it back took half and hour by which time Sense and Sensibility was almost at an end!
I expect when my sister says to take a jumper and a bucket on Christmas day in case of heating failure and roof leak in her new home (it is by all accounts a bit of a wreck), she may not be joking.
It won’t be the first strange Christmas…we have had some unusual Christmases in the past which are documented either on this blog or my previous one. When my daughter and her husband worked in a village pub near Masham we had our family Christmas dinner there whilst it was closed to the public. We had the whole pub and restaurant to ourselves and a room each for the night. Catering on such a large scale was much easier in the professional kitchen than it would have been trying to do it at home and, of course, as daughter was then married to a chef it was all prepared and on time.
It was a good Christmas and the men all loved it as they had a pool table and the bar all to themselves.
The other crazy Christmas day was when my MIL was in a care home in Shrewsbury and we went to spend Christmas day and Boxing day with her. We had decided this particular year not to have dinner in the care home with her (don’t ask me why as we usually did) so because all the cafes are closed on Christmas day DH and I had our Christmas dinner (actually cup a soup) in a car park somewhere in Shrewsbury, complete with a camping stove and some very funny looks!
Well that is me finished for the day…just time to press publish before day 21 is over and then time for bed I think. It was exceptionally dark this morning being the winter solstice. I was glad to be warm and cosy in bed and lingered far longer than I should have done, especially as those stars were calling out to be made.
So what is left to create for Christmas now…well I hope you might drop by and see.
I hope all your plans are going well, back soon x
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where the journey takes me 2 