Christmas Day, 2011

Happy Christmas, everyone! War is over! Oh no, wait, wrong song…

This year I was dreaming of a White Christmas, and by that I mean “a white dress”. Well, I wouldn’t have been talking about snow, would I?

They say you should never wear white after Labor Day, but I generally just ignore Them, and this was no exception. My choice of attire did cause some consternation amongst my parents and Terry, who couldn’t understand why I would choose to wear something I had absolutely NO CHANCE of not spilling red wine/ketchup/coffee/anything else I touched on, but actually, I surprised everyone (including myself) by managing to keep the dress clean all day, partly because when we sat down to dinner, Terry and my mum draped me in lots of different aprons and tea towels and various other garments, so the dress stayed white. It’s probably going to be my biggest achievement of 2011, to be honest: the family were all so proud!

Anyway, we had a fabulous Christmas, and here’s what it looked like:

I didn’t photograph the food other than the sorbet and, well, the wine, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it existed, although not for long, because my mum and dad really excelled themselves this year and Terry and I lost no time in clearing our plates.

Actually, I tell a lie: I did photograph the dessert, which was lovingly made by my mum, who also put together the “heart” theme on the table:

Instead of a Christmas tree, this year my mum created a “Random Tree”: a branch from the garden painted white, hung with fairy lights, and then festooned with little “random” messages which we all wrote in the run up to Christmas and read out on Christmas Day. (It was going to be a wishing tree, but we thought it might be more amusing to allow people to just write whatever took their fancy, and also, I don’t think anyone wanted to listen to me read out what would essentially be the entire Christian Louboutin back catalogue…). It was a really cool idea, so we’re going to do it next year, too…

As for Rubin:

Don’t be fooled (by the dogs that he got/he’s still, he’s still Rubin from the block…): he is posing here only very grudgingly. He was much more interested in the (edible) contents of the Christmas stockings my parents and his Auntie Lila provided, so Sam the Dog was all but forgotten. Poor Sam.

And that was Christmas day! At some point in the food fest, we managed to fit in a visit to Terry’s family, who we’ve also been spending time with over the past couple of days: two of Terry’s brothers and their families are in town, so it’s been great to catch up with everyone, and we still have lots more planned, so there may be large gaps between blog posts. Then again, there might not be, so don’t go getting your hopes up.

Hope everyone’s having a great holiday!

(P.S. My blog is taking comments hostage again, and we’ve no idea why… if yours doesn’t appear right away, don’t worry, you haven’t been blacklisted or anything – it’s just the blog behaving badly, and your comment will be published as soon as I’m online!)