Christmas 2012

When Grace crept down to our room on Christmas morning, I braced myself for an early start to our day.  Instead, she cuddled up beside me and drifted back to sleep, not waking until around seven thirty when her little sister thought it was time to get the fun started.  As she sat up, I asked, "Do you remember what day it is today?"

She looked at me quizzically before replying... "Wednesday?"

I started the morning with camera in hand.  A few shots later, and it remained untouched for the rest of the day as I instead enjoyed the company of my loved ones and delighted in their excited faces and all the fun as presents were opened and time was spent together.

We had a quiet few hours at home with a special breakfast of homemade waffles and fruit, enjoying our gifts and some down time before the big day ahead.  Lunch was at my Uncle's with extended family on my side and our night time celebration was with Paul's extended family at our house.  With an extremely over tired Sophie tucked up in her own cot and Grace running happily around on our lawn with her cousins, I looked around on Christmas night at all the smiling faces and thought about how lucky we are to have a yard large enough to comfortably host our ever growing family.

Christmas was fun filled and celebratory but quite tiring and today has thankfully been much slower paced, just as Boxing Day should be in my eyes.  We've gradually gone through and put away our gifts, stacked and un-stacked the dishwasher several times, had a swim in the neighbours' pool (they are away on holidays for several weeks and have encouraged us to use it... much welcomed with the heat wave ahead of us here in Perth), nibbled on left overs and caught up on some sleep with afternoon naps all round.  I'm hoping this pattern of days spent lazily at home relaxing and enjoying some quiet time together continues.

I hope your Christmas was a magical one too...

A Relaxing Lead-Up To Christmas

It seems a short break from blogging was just what I needed in order to get myself feeling more organised, balanced and in control at what can be a chaotic time of year.  The lead-up to Christmas in our household this week has been very chilled indeed.  With all my gift shopping out of the way earlier in December, I've really enjoyed the past few weeks of Christmas excitement with the girls.

Our Advent calendar activities have been a hit and are a tradition I plan on continuing in future years. Each morning when she wakes, Grace is eager to see what the day's activity will be and excitedly counts the remaining days left until the 25th.

We've been busy baking and decorating gingerbread men, cooking (and eating) chocolate fudge, doing LOTS of Christmas crafts, making cards for family members, wrapping gifts with handmade wrapping paper (you can see Grace's potato print tree-stamped brown paper in the top photo), been to visit Father Christmas, taken a drive to see the Christmas lights, sung Christmas carols and soaked up all the magic that is in the air at this time of year.  Knowing what a busy day next Tuesday will be, we've chosen to avoid the crazy crowds and stayed fairly close to home this week. In between our Advent fun, we've been tidying and pottering and getting our house all set to host Christmas night for 30 guests.  

And so for now, I'll sign off for the Christmas break.  Thank you all for stopping by this space of mine throughout the year, for leaving much appreciated comments and for making my blogging experience all the more richer. I wish each and every one of you a safe and happy Christmas with your loved ones...

   

Our ‘Unglamorous’ Christmas Tree

As a little girl, decorating our Christmas tree was SUCH an exciting event.  Our tree was very basic, a simple sparkly-branched type no more than three or four feet high.  However, I can still remember most of the contents of our decoration box fondly… the multi-coloured lights that would blink on and off, the pretty little angel with her wispy white-blonde hair and rosy cheeks, the fat jolly kitsch-looking Santas and the tiny colourful presents of which the purple and gold were always my favourites. 

When I moved into my own home, I had visions of a stylishly decorated tree, one that stuck to a simple colour scheme and had ornaments neatly balanced amongst the branches.  Baubles were evenly placed, large ornaments kept towards the bottom of the tree and tinsel was not favoured. 

Now that I have children, my idea of what makes a Christmas tree special has changed somewhat.  The importance of our tree is no longer placed on how it looks, but on the tradition of decorating it together as a family and the sentimental value behind each ornament.  There is tinsel (which Grace thinks is the bees knees in all its shimmering glory), baubles are squashed together in some parts, homemade creations adorn several branches and the colour scheme we’ve gone with is definitely best described as ‘eclectic’.  But the look of joy and wonder on Grace and Sophie’s faces as they helped decorate our tree last weekend confirmed that it was perfect.
 

 

As many others do, each year I buy the girls an ornament, with the intention that they will both have a boxful to take with them when they one day leave home…a collection of decorations that they will hopefully drag out with fondness and use to decorate their own trees.  I’m hoping that as they do so, memories of the tree from their childhood will come flooding back and they will recall all the fun we had decorating ours together as a family…

 

 

The top handmade ceramic snowflake ornament was crafted by Paul's cousin's wife Sarah.

The Willow Tree ornament was a gift from one of my past dear students.

Creating Christmas Traditions

One of the best things about being a Mum at this time of year is being able to create special Christmas traditions for my girls.  This year, I'm keen to try and make my own Advent Calendar. As well as having a visual countdown, I want to include a whole bunch of fun activities for us to do together, as well as a few treats for the girls to open.

I've been thinking back to my own childhood and bugging Paul for memories of his own so that I can include some of these onto the calendar I make.  I love that we're able to come up with a unique own set of Christmas traditions now that we have a little family of our own.  Christmas Eve will definitely be 'open one small present', just as both of us were allowed to do on the night before Christmas and the first day of December will be 'put up the Christmas tree'.

As for the calendar itself, I haven't decided yet which style I'll go with.  I love the look of the tree one above, made from paint sample cards but the ready made one below from Create Lovely on Etsy is enticing too.  With only 23 days left of this month though, I'd better hurry up and decide...

Which Christmas traditions did your family have when you were growing up and which ones have you continued with your own family today?

Image #1 from A Simple Nest

Image #2 from Create Lovely

A Few Christmas Photos

Well, Christmas has come and gone for another whole year and it’s hard to believe it’s almost 2012. We had a fun (albeit exhausting) time in our little household with Grace really being able to understand the whole gift giving concept and enjoying all the festivities that come along with this season. She was very disappointed though to discover that her Advent calendar had finished!

Our morning was spent with the four of us checking to see whether Santa and his reindeers had been, exchanging gifts and playing with new toys. Grace was very excited to see that the beer and biscuits we left out had been enjoyed by Father Christmas and that the broccoli we left for the reindeers had been devoured (I had a piece of broccoli due to be thrown out so I figured, why waste it?)

Late morning, my Mum and sister came over to help get lunch on and open more presents and then Paul’s Mum joined us for our lunchtime meal. We kept things simple with turkey, ham, salad and potato bake followed by the most delicious lime cheesecake which my sister made. I was very grateful to my Mum, mother-in-law and sister for organising all the food for me.

At night, we went to Paul’s cousin’s house where we spent the evening with his aunts, uncles and cousins.

Here’s a few family photos…

The Christmas I'd Planned To Have…

Image via weheartit

Entertaining guests and decorating when it comes to parties is something I love doing. So when we decided to have Christmas lunch at our place this year (to make things easier with Sophie as we’ll be going out at night) I was excited at the prospect of the pretty table and traditional Christmas lunch I’d be able to plan and prepare. With only six of us, I thought doing so would be easy.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case when you throw a newborn into the mix and a stay in hospital for Mummy and bub two weeks before Christmas. I’ve been very disappointed that unfortunately I haven’t the time or energy to do all that I was hoping to do this year. Wrapping my presents prettily and baking things like Christmas biscuits hasn’t happened. However, I've now accepted our position this year and know in my heart that the important thing is that we’ll be spending Christmas with our family. I also can't wait to share in all the excitement of Grace really being able to appreciate this time of year and all the fun that goes with it.

I hope you and your loved ones all have a wonderful Christmas and a safe and happy New Year.

Christmas Wishes

Well, only one more sleep to go and aside from another layer on my ice cream cake for tomorrow's lunch, I'm all set to go. Even though many of you have already signed off for the year, I wanted to wish you all a lovely Christmas - I hope you all have a wonderful time celebrating with your family and friends, enjoy all the delicious food and receive a nice prezzie or two.

Through blogging, I have connected with so many supportive, kind hearted, beautiful individuals and made some truly wonderful friends who inspire me through blogs of their own each and every day. I appreciate the time you all take to read my posts and leave me comments and would like to say thank you to all who follow and read Homely One.

Warm wishes and big hugs to you all and I'll see you back here soon...

I've been flicking through Christmas photos from the past few years - it's been so nice remembering all the special times spent celebrating. I can't believe how little Grace looked in her Christmas photo from last year and how much she's changed in 12 months!

I've just noticed that this is my 200th post - how lovely it fell on Christmas Eve.

Pretty Christmas Presents

What a busy few days we've had recently! On Friday night, we had the cousin's get-together at our house where lots of fond memories of Gran Ivy were shared. On Saturday morning we organised a last minute catch-up with friends of ours from Boston who are in Western Australia over Christmas. Luckily our house was nice and tidy after my big clean up on Friday but I did spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking sausage rolls, whipping up some chicken and aioli sandwiches and baking a chocolate slice. Sunday morning we visited my Mum to swap Christmas presents (she has since left on her trip to the UK and contacted me last night to say they had landed safely in Manchester). Sunday afternoon was a Christmas party with extended family at Paul's uncle's beautiful home overlooking the river. Finally, yesterday was Paul's Gran's funeral which was a lovely service and fortunately, I managed to keep Grace occupied with bits and bobs from my handbag and she was very well behaved all day.





As for Christmas preparations, I've finally wrapped all our presents. I went with a red and white colour theme and used red and white printed gift wrap and a roll of polka dot paper too. With some gifts, I wrapped a band of contrasting paper around before tying on a ribbon. I didn't wrap all our presents prettily (especially not the children's presents!!) I just focused on the gifts for friends and family who I knew would appreciate a carefully wrapped gift. It was wonderful that the ribbons and bakers' twine Catherine included in the little package she sent me were all red and white colours too as they fit in perfectly.

As for gift tags, I used a combination of the lovely ones Catherine made and sent to me (you can see her kraft paper ones in the photo above) and then, the other day I spotted a roll of packaging tape which matched the one she had used on her tags so I bought some and used it to make some more simple tags of my own. I also used the tape on a few presents which you can see below.

I truly do enjoy giving gifts more than receiving them. I like to think I've carefully chosen a gift that will be appreciated and enjoyed and even more, my favourite part of Christmas preparations is wrapping all the presents. I do still have half of one gift to buy (although I'm hoping Paul will sort that one out for me) and I need to get something small for Grace but apart from that, all I need to do before Christmas is make two desserts and I'm all set!!

How are all your Christmas preparations going?

Christmas Progress

I have really enjoyed browsing through posts this week about how others are decorating their homes for Christmas - there is so much inspiration to be found. I initially had visions this year of making lots of Christmas bits and pieces but the last few weeks have left little time for anything but looking after Grace and so my grand plans will have to wait until next year unfortunately. Being a bit older Grace will be able to join in with the crafty fun a bit more then too.

At least our Christmas tree is up and decorated (although it does look a little bare. It is proving to be a bit too tempting for Grace though and has been pulled over twice (luckily I hadn't hung any fragile ornaments this year). I think presents under the tree will definitely have to wait until Christmas Eve!



Yesterday, I received my first gift of the Christmas season. I arrived home after being out present shopping (am halfway through thankfully) to find a parcel on my front door step from Catherine of A Time To Create. Through our blogs, Catherine and I have become good friends. She is one of those bloggers I 'click with', who thinks similarly, has common interests and hobbies and who inspires me so much. So many of Catherine's posts are saved under my 'to make' and 'to cook' folders. When I opened the box, there was such a beautifully wrapped gift inside. I was so overwhelmed that little tears sprang to my eyes. Knowing how much I admire Catherine's crochet and crafting which she shares on her blog, she sent me a book called 'Learn To Crochet', some crochet wool, a crochet hook, a package of her beautiful handmade Christmas tags and a beautiful star garland. I was so touched by Catherine's kind gesture and feel so grateful to have made such a wonderful blogging friend. When I hang my garland and wrap my presents using the gorgeous tags I have received, I'll share some more photos.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend ahead. What do you all have planned?

Restful Christmas Break

Asha with her Christmas cracker

Well, Christmas is over for another year and what a wonderful one it was. Being Grace’s first made it all the more exciting in our little household, even though the wrapping paper proved to be the biggest attraction for her! I was truly spoilt this year and received some lovely gifts, the most thoughtful of which was from my husband who has enrolled me in two photography classes next week (knowing how much I would like to improve my skills in this area for my blog). I was also really pleased to receive this pretty tray I’ve had my eye on (thanks to some clever detective work on my sister-in-law’s part!) However, aside from the gifts, the best part of Christmas was all the fun had celebrating with family.

We have just returned from a short holiday with extended family at Paul’s uncle’s holiday house. It was a nice way to recharge after the busy Christmas period and as usual, there was plenty of laughter, good food and fun times.

Hope you have all had a relaxing break too and are all set to welcome a new year.

Early Christmas Present

Photo by William Meppem via Donna Hay

My lovely friend Kylie came over for tea the other night so we could exchange Christmas gifts. She got me the most gorgeous present - Donna Hay's new book, Seasons which showcases some of the loveliest styling I have seen. With all it's fabulous photography, it's so much more than just a cookbook. Can't wait to try out some recipes from it in the New Year! Anyway, I'm off to do some last minute preparations for tomorrow. Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas - hope you all get spoilt!

Only Four More Sleeps!

We had a busy weekend here tidying things up around our place as we are hosting Christmas night for 28 people (not counting babies!) Paul did a fantastic job of getting the outside looking lovely by mulching all the gardens, mowing the lawn and tidying up (we have a fairly large yard so this was no small task!) I stayed inside out of the heat cleaning, wrapping presents and baking Donna Hay Christmas cookies. This week aside from more cooking, I need to sort out how I'll be decorating the table. How are everyone else's Christmas preparations coming along? Hope you don't have too much more to do and can put your feet up before Friday and enjoy a Christmas drink or two...

Thankyou all for your kind comments on Saturday - things went well and I feel a sense of peace with that part of everything now over x

Delicious Chocolate Fudge

Each year around Christmas, I like to make a batch of Chocolate Fudge. It’s so lovely to sit down at night with a piece to enjoy with my cuppa. I’ve posted the recipe below. Next week I’m hoping to make a batch of Christmas biscuits. Who else is doing some Christmas cooking?

Fast Chocolate Fudge

125g dark cooking chocolate (chopped)
125g copha (chopped)
2 tbs icing sugar
1 tbs cocoa
½ x 395g can sweetened condensed milk
½ tsp vanilla essence

Line the base of an 18cm square cake tin with greaseproof paper. Oil lightly. Melt together chocolate and copha over a low heat, stirring until smooth. Add icing sugar, cocoa and vanilla. Quickly stir in the condensed milk until blended (mixture will begin to firm immediately so work quickly). Pour at once into prepared tin and smooth the surface. Chill until firm. Cut into squares to serve.

O Christmas Tree

Image from here

We put up our Christmas tree last night which was very exciting. We have only just bought our first tree after over four years of being in this house. This morning I am off to buy some more decorations and some lights but I’m still deciding on a colour scheme. What colours are you all going with for your Christmas decorations?