@MamaBee -
I love every single photo I've ever seen of your house/s. Just gorgeous! And your Christmas decorations are superlative! Thank you so much for sharing!
And MANY thanks to
@kipari for starting this thread!
When we lived in Australia we had a set routine. We used to go to church on Christmas morning, then have a bunch of our friends back to our house for morning tea - normally between 16 and 20 people in total. Everyone got a gift and we had sfrappole and fruitcake and fresh cherries.
Then in the afternoon we used to congregate at my best girlfriend's house with a few other friends of ours and her kids - always the 8 of us - where we'd have BBQ'd turkey breasts, seafood platters, and salads, then exchange gifts. After a bit of a breather we'd have pineapple and coconut icecream cake for dessert. We did the same thing every year and it was awesome!
But now my routine is different. Every December I have Thanksgiving here in Boston (previously NY, where we lived originally when we moved to the US), then my husband and I put up the tree and decorate the house, then wrap the gifts over the rest of the weekend. (This was Thanksgiving from 2019. We decided to go more casual, put up our family room tree first, then ate watching old movies and toasting all the things for which we're grateful - which was a lot.)
Two weeks before Christmas I head out to LA, where I decorate my god-kids' and their Dad's house, and we wrap all their gifts, too. A few days before Christmas, we all get super dressed up and go to the Atheneum (the Caltech staff club - old, stone, gorgeous) for their massive Christmas buffet. Our group is my friend (David), his kids, me, his brother, Rob, (who, as it turned out, ended up marrying my best girlfriend after we introduced them), my best girlfriend (who comes to the US every year now for Christmas and has done for 20 years and is now married to Rob), my god son's girlfriend and my god daughter's best friend. In recent years we've also started inviting another friend of ours, Christel Joy, a friend we met via yoga, who comes down from WA every pre-Christmas to join in. So - 9 of us in total. After that, we go on a tour of the Christmas lights, and everyone stays the night at David's house, except for his brother and my best friend / his brother's now wife (look, seriously, it's not that complicated in real life...) The next day, Rob (brother) and Wendy (my best girlfriend / Rob's wife) come over early, and we have breakfast all together. We read the Christmas story, pray and thank God for the greatest gift of all, then have a bang up brekky! After that, we spend a good hour or two opening gifts, doing the appropriate fashion shows of new clothes, play with whatever gift is appropriate at the time, then, afterwards, Christel Joy runs a a restorative yoga class. The next day I go home. We've done it this way for years as my god kids' parents are divorced and they normally go to their mom for Christmas day. This suits everyone, as dinner at the Atheneum is the heart of our LA Christmas, and they're not open after the 23rd. So it all hangs together perfectly.
I'm always home by the 22nd/23rd, at which point I get the last few bits and pieces organized. Wendy and Rob will generally fly over on Christmas eve and in previous years we've gone to church in the evening - then come home and drink egg nog and eat fruit mince tarts in front of the fire. We have Christmas eve boxes, which we fill with small, inexpensive gifts, and we open those. On Christmas morning we have stockings and a few things under the tree, plus things sent to us from friends or family or anything that won't fit in the stockings. In the afternoon I do a roast - duck this year, in fact - and then we sort of collapse. Rob and Wen will stay till New Year's, at which point Rob returns to LA to go back to work. Wendy stays a little longer and on the first weekend after New Years we take everything down and pack it away till next year. A few days after that, she returns to LA to spend a few more days with Rob, then she flies home to Australia.
So basically, the whole shebang normally starts with Thanksgiving, and ends mid January. I love the Yuletide season. It's incredibly special and is the heart of my year.
This year, given the pandemic, we tried to mix things up a bit and my god kids came out for Thanksgiving, and we had a wonderful time and decorated the house together for Christmas. I'm still going out there, but only for a week, and just to decorate the house and organize all the gifts - no group get-together, no big dinner. I return to Boston on the 16th and will have Christmas dinner with Tim as normal, but no Christmas eve service and no guests, tho we *do* have lots of gifts and will eat our roast duck. ..
.. We're shipping gifts to everyone and on Christmas afternoon we'll open our gifts on Zoom with the LA connection and we'll be joined by Wendy in Australia and Christel Joy in WA, plus my god son's girlfriend and my god daughter's best friend. So there's that, and it will be precious. <3
I posted this photo somewhere else, but I'll put it here as well: this is my living/dining room this year.
www.hohiyashop.com
