snugger

With so much talk of goals, resolutions and such going on, I thought that today I would talk about…

Christmas.

Namely, the things we did this year that may or may not become household traditions. I know that if I don’t have some way of remembering the things that stressed me out, I’ll probably do them again next oops, I mean this year. All I’ll remember is that it sounded like a good idea last time, and we did it, so it must have been ok right?

Let’s see…

1. Gingerbread cookie advent calendar. I’ve already done this 2 years in a row which does make it dangerously close to a tradition already. However, I rushed to get the cookies done on time, and actually ended up with only enough for a few days and had to make more. And then to compound the “why did I bother” kind of feeling, we forgot about eating them everyday and as a result have several little packets left. As much as I love the thought of this, I’m not sure I want to commit to the baking stress. Perhaps it would be better to think of something else to put in the pockets. And I can still make the cookies if I want to, just whenever I feel like it.

2. Getting out the Santa Afghan. This was the first time since receiving the afghan that I’ve put it out. My mother cross-stitched about 20 Santas onto a beautiful cream afghan and to be honest, I’ve been afraid of anything happening to it. This year I decided to just get it out anyway. I used it as a tablecloth over a small side table which had a poinsettia and 4 pillar candles on candle saucers. No harm there. Oh, wait, what does that candle think it’s doing! You saw that one coming didn’t you? One of the candles overflowed its saucer and made a lovely waxy puddle on my afghan. I’m still at a loss to know quite how to get it out. With a small child in the house, I think it’s safe to say that this will be taking a sabbatical.

3. Roast turkey with all the trimmings. Ok. There is nothing - no temperature, no humidity level, no worry about how much the organic free range turkey cost - that will prevent me demanding roast turkey. Just so we’re all on the same page here.

4. Boxing Day turkey risotto. Please refer to item 3, replacing ‘roast turkey’ with ‘risotto’.

5. Making chocolate truffles as gifts. To be honest I’m not sure we thought of making this some new tradition. We were just at a loss as to what we could buy Gary’s mum. It was actually kind of fun, but time consuming (especially in a warm kitchen, which required them to go back in the fridge before coating). And since they don’t keep very long you need to make them the day before you give them, i.e.: Christmas Eve. I’d be happy to do it again, but wouldn’t want to commit unless I knew I had the time, energy, and enough people to help me eat the leftovers. For some reason there just seemed to be so much other food lurking about…

6. Plant a tree on Christmas Eve. This was another thing that wasn’t meant as a tradition, but I’d been wanting to plant a lemon tree for some time and we got one at quite a reasonable price while we were looking for something else. And then just happened to plant it on Christmas Eve. Why not I say. Planting more trees is a good thing to do. Think of it as giving your garden, or the earth if you’re that way inclined, a present. Lime this year baby?

7. Move house 2 weeks before Christmas, while you’re pregnant and tired too. That’s not funny. Don’t even joke about it. If I ever say it’s ok, smack me.