christmas 2015

Happy Holidays! I hope everyone had as lovely of a Christmas as I did.

This year we had a full house for our Christmas Eve dinner, so there was a fair bit of chaos in the weeks leading up to the big event. Shopping, cooking, cleaning, re-arranging the furniture…even our tree wasn’t spared! It ended up on the opposite side of the room this year to make room for more couch seating.

Speaking of trees, ours had such a short trunk that there wasn’t any room underneath the lower branches for presents. We made a gift table instead, and my mother decorated it with a spray of festive red orchids. How Singaporean!

For atmosphere, I updated our cloche display with strands of copper fairy lights and lots of pillar candles.

But the most exciting addition to our seasonal decor this year was our new Christmas stockings. Thanks to my mother’s wizardry with a sewing machine, we finally got some beautiful silver ones that go with our holiday colours. Aren’t they amazing?

Christmas Eve itself wound up being even more of a fiasco than we’d bargained for, thanks to Adam getting food poisoning and landing himself in the hospital at 4am that morning. The poor guy was pretty woozy for the rest of the day, so although he did rally and sit with us for most of the night, there wasn’t a lot of photo taking. There was however good food and great company, plus lots of champagne and laughter and presents, so I like to think it was the kind of evening that we’ll all remember anyway.

Christmas itself was a lot more relaxed. We were so full from the night before that we skipped brunch altogether and got right down to presents. The little ones went first (of course) and then the rest of us played our traditional gift-guessing game. I won this year!

We spent the rest of the day lounging around, grazing on Christmas treats, watching movies, and leisurely cooking a casual Christmas dinner just for ourselves. It was quiet, but perfect.

However your spent your holidays this year, I hope it was wonderful…or at least restful…or at least that you didn’t spent part of it in the hospital. From my family to yours, Merry Christmas (hey, there’s still 9 days of it left!) and a very Happy Near Year.