Some Christmas Tags

The Christmas Tag

The wonderful Undaunted Adventure has created a lovely new Christmas Tag to share some love between us bloggers. I’m totally thrilled to be nominated in the kick off post.

Then a little while later the fabulous Chehak at ChehakChirps and the lovely Gemma at This Brit’s Life tagged me too.

The Christmas Tag Rules

• Put on your favourite Christmas playlist to listen to while answering!
• Have a Christmas drink and/or snack while writing
• Thank the blogger who tagged you and link to their site
• Answer the 10 original questions
• Answer the questions set by whoever tagged you
• Ask 2 questions of your own
• Tag 6 bloggers to take part
• Leave a link or two to some of your 2020 posts!

The Original 10 Questions

I’m going to get the kids to help me answer these, because their ideas will be lots of fun to hear.

• What’s your favourite Christmas Song?
  Large boy: Last Christmas by Wham
  Small boy: 12 Days of Christmas
  Me: Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade

• What kind of food did you leave out for Santa and his reindeers on Christmas Eve?
  All of us: carrots, mince pies, some oats and raisins, and mummy insists that Santa likes Gin and Tonic.

• What time do you normally get up on Christmas morning?
  Boys: not sure
  Me: not before 7am!

• When do you normally put your Christmas decorations up?
  Me: sometime after large boy’s birthday on 8th December.

• Who’s the scrooge in your family/friendship group?
  Me! I hate seeing Christmas things in the shops in September or even earlier. I grumble at people putting their trees up before December and oh don’t get me started on the house down the road with red and blue flashing lights that makes me think there’s an emergency vehicle parked up everything I pull out of the driveway.

• Do you prefer giving or getting gifts?
  Large boy: receiving
  Small boy: getting
  Me: giving, I love choosing them and keep a private Amazon wishlist of ideas all year long, so that come December I don’t need to think too much. We have 6 immediate family birthdays and several friends in December and the first week of January too, so its a hectic time remembering everyone. I need to get ideas early or it just gets a bit too stressful.

• What does your family usually eat for Christmas dinner?
  Me: it depends where we are. At my mum’s in turkey and trimmings, with her amazing chestnut stuffing. At the in-laws it’s often steak and the usual bits for a roast lunch. This year, we’re going to have roast beef, probably.

• Where did you spend last Christmas?
  At my sister in laws last year. We were 16 for Christmas dinner and it was at once lovely and very strange for me. I hardly knew half the people, having met them only at my sister in law’s wedding, and no one acknowledged that we were missing small boy3 from the occasion – except large boy because he’s just a gem.

• What’s your favourite Christmas memory?
  Probably the year before, at my parents. I was 15 weeks pregnant with our third boy and so excited. Life seemed to hold so much promise, we saw both my grandmas and the boys were a joy with their grandparents and great-grans. It was just lovely in every way.

• Which Christmas film do you have to watch every year?
  Me: Polar Express, just love it!
  Large boy: The Grinch
  Small boy: Polar Express as well.

Undaunted Adventure’s Questions

• If you could invite any celebrity (alive or dead) to Christmas dinner, who would you invite and why?
  Bill Murray I think. My grandpa died when I was 3 and my grandad when I was 18, so I’d love to spend Christmas was a funny, cuddly grandfather type around. I suppose my dad and my father in law should take that role these days, but they’re still too fatherly for me.
• Can you name all of Santa’s reindeers? (No cheating!)
  Nope, not a chance!

ChehakChirp’s Questions

• What is one Christmas tradition you haven’t tried yet but would love to?
  Oh that’s a hard one. I think once the kids are older I’d like to spend Christmas eve helping out in some way. Delivering Christmas meals to older people who live alone for example.
• Are you more of a shopper or more of a DIY person when it comes to gifts or decor for Christmas?
  For gifts, I’m a shopper. I try to plan a little bit all year because we have so many December birthdays in the family too. For decorations, I love hanging things on the tree that the kids have made over the years.

This Brit’s Life’s Questions

• What is your favourite Christmas treat? 
  Got to be chestnut stuffing. I love my mum’s chestnut stuffing, whether we’re having turkey or anything else, there has to be chestnut stuffing. I’m making my own this year and I can only hope its half as good.
• Do you usually spend the holidays working or relaxing?
  Ha, definitely not working. But its not always that relaxing either. Typically, we travel several hours to one set of parents or the other for Christmas, then home and then away again to the other parents for New Year. I’m really looking forward to a quiet festive season at home this year. I’m going to miss seeing family enormously but being at home will be lovely.

My Questions

• What do you secretly hope to get for Christmas this year?
• What funny tricks do you know to convince kids that Santa really is real?

And I Tag

• Tom from The Doubting Thomas (@TheDTblogs)
• Michelle at Boomer Ecocrusader (@MichelleOram13)
• Becky at Strikeouts + Sprinkles (@KsAndSprinkles)
• Ingrid at Experiments in Fiction (@Experimentsinfc)
• Elly at Elly Elementary (@egallagher713)

Blogmas My Favourite Things Tag

The Curly Traveling Chef sent me the gift of the Blogmas My Favourite Things Tag.

My Favourite Things

Christmas Eve Food Preparation

My absolute favourite part of Christmas is actually the day before, specifically at my mum’s. On Christmas Eve we get prepared. She ices the Christmas cake with help from the boys. We make pigs in blankets and chestnut stuffing, peel and slice some of the veg and get the turkey ready to go in the oven in the morning. Its a really special family time, all working together and getting ourselves organized.

Black Friday

Yeah, yeah, its capitalism at its worst. But December and January are really busy for us with birthdays as well as Christmas, so I do tend to make use of black Friday to try to manage the costs a bit. I might have a gift in mind as a general idea and I’ll search for a good deal on it during black Friday promotions. I got my mum a smart watch one year and this year himself has a Foodi Ninja that he’s been lusting after for ages.

Treating Teachers

My mum and dad were both teachers as was my mother in law. As well as having had some wonderful teachers myself, I’ve seen the effort, dedication and time that they put into helping children learn and blossom from the out-of-hours side. I have so much respect for teachers, TAs, dinner ladies, caretakers and school office staff. They put so much into caring for our children and giving them the best possible start in life. So I really love giving something back to them at Christmas as well as at the end of the school year. This year they’re each getting a small bottle of gin, a jar of homemade jam and a couple of mince pies (which I need to make on Thursday).

Christmas Eve Boxes

A few years ago a friend of mine decorated two big boxes for the boys, but she was having trouble sourcing things and working full time too so they were never the festive joys she wanted. This year I got hold of a couple of tins of brightly coloured paint and finished them off. We all love opening them after dinner on Christmas eve. They always have a new pair of pyjamas each, their Santa plates, a book, and the bits and bobs to treat Santa and the reindeer.

Gifts to my Favourite Bloggers

As an early Christmas present, I’d like to tag:

• Keith from On My Mind Today (@OnMyMindToday1)
• Courtney at the Okay Mommy (@okay_mommy)
• Renata from Buffalo Sauce Everywhere (@renataoleo)
• Claudia at Do What You Love (@CPFalcone)
• The wonderful folks at T.B.C (@HyacinthSoul3)