Christmas preparations in our house start in early November with my tree… yes I know its FAR TOO EARLY, but I can’t resist bursting open the lid of my wooden sea chest and hauling out the sparkly decorations; many of which I collected in far away places on my travels. My favourite decoration suppliers have been Liberty’s in London and Myers in Sydney. I love the atmosphere that the twinkly lights give off at night in our lounge. It was a surprise when Ollie seemed ambivalent to it this year. I was delighted to avoid having to fence it off from his attention. This year the decorations are red, silver and white (i’ve too many decorations to fit on only 2/3rds of the tree).
Evie is loving the twinkling lights. Of course it’s her first Christmas this year and rather last minute this week I realised that she needed a decoration for her on the tree to remember it by. Here is the decoration I made her which is part bought and part hand-stitched.
The stockings are hung from our mantel for the first time this year. Here is an earlier post describing them, although I still need to add our names to each.
I made these decorations to hang from the kids doors this Christmas. I found the cute decorations in Kircaldies (Wellington) and added their names using a twink pen. Super quick and easy:) The only problem is they rattle when I try to sneak in and out of their rooms. But they seem to have become accustomed to the noise now, thankfully.
As I write this post I’m feeling very Christmasy and relaxed. I’m enjoying my first glass of wine in three years… Man it tastes good:) I just LOVE that my baby girl sleeps reliably through the night now which affords me this nightcap:)
Ed just scoffed the last piece of our massive Christmas cake that I baked a month ago (left). It’s a shameful record for us; 3 days out from Christmas and its ALL gone. How bad are we! He asks ‘can I make another one’ – yeah, next year:)
I baked some other goodies for gifts this year which I packaged up tonight in cellophane bags… chocolate and almond oat cookies, berry brownie and almond cookies (above). I’ve still to make jars of lemon curd tomorrow if the kids nap.
I also found some time this week to make these Christmas meringue wreaths from the Donna Hay magazine (see previous post). Although I didn’t have any white vinegar so I used raspberry vinegar, which although tastes delicious!, discolored the meringue. They’re quite fragile so I decided to cellophane them both to protect them and to make it quick and easy to add them to the table as place settings with names added.
I had some fun taking pictures of the kids in Santa hats a few weeks back. Evie’s not yet sitting up so makes it hard to get a picture of her without an adult propping her safely up.
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