All is calm, all is bright (HA! Not. Christmas, Part II)

On Christmas Eve, all was a-flurry at my parents house as we prepared for the big bash that night. Everyone was in the Christmas spirit....






...kind of.



As usual, everyone ate and drank way too much, and i actually think the desserts outshone the main meal! Christmas cupcakes, tiramisu, vanilla slice, wine trifle, Christmas cookies, almond biscuits, cannoli in all the best flavours, a mud cake and sponge Christmas log...my mouth's watering just thinking about it. But i love our Christmas Eve tradition because everyone is together, the kids, the oldies, all of my dear cousins - my best friends - and everyone is happy and its lovely. The whole night is wiled away talking and laughing and eating and really, isn't that what Christmas is all about?



And, just for the kiddies, even Santa made an appearance.

(We call him Anti-Santa, of the boozy variety)

Christian not paying attention to his story. Fair enough. It was The Little Mermaid.

My father, his face begging the question that my brother and I have debated our whole life - is he smiling or snarling? The mystery lives on.

Sylvana and the gorgeous William - ACK let me squeeze those cheeks again!

(Not yours, Syl.) (no offence.)

On Christmas Eve we also celebrate a very special birthday. I'm talking, of course, about Cooper. He turned TWO this year, and we thought that deserved a cupcake. He didn't trouble himself with blowing out the candle.

"Hey what's that guys? Is that for me? Can i have it? When can i have it?"

After falling into bed at 2am, we still had Christmas day to contend with. This means more food, more drink, and another round of Happy Santa for Jo.

My Uncle, looking alarmingly happier now that he's sitting on Santa's knee.

Mum and Gerda, and Jo in the middle, just loving it all.

Opening presents is of course the perk of rising early on Christmas morning, and as you can see i was very pleased indeed with my Wii - THANKS JO!!! We have already had several rounds of tennis on the thing, and i have won exactly no matches so far. I did win a round of bowling though, i think. Was that me? It may not have been me. It may very well have been Jo. Jo is nodding his head. Glad we clarified, lest my readers think for a moment that i have any athletic ability whatsoever, even in video games. Marvellous.

And here we all are, sitting down to lunch, which is, as you can see, not Turkey, but pasta. Cause that's how we roll.

(bloody Italians)

By the end of the day, Cooper had really had enough. Buggered.

We had nothing left to do but nap, watch Christmas cartoons, play several rowdy games of cards and watch mum consume one too many Gin and Tonics (hey, I'm not judging. it's Christmas.) Suddenly it was 10pm and i was exhausted, not too mention ready to burst.

Thank goodness we could have a sleep in on Boxing day, before heading over to see Annie for even more eating and drinking (she only visits a few times a year. so i just had to do it. i had to.) Jo felt the occasion worthy of bringing out the Santa suit for the 3rd day in a row, and why not, when you find a gem of a wig like this to wear with it:

And on that note, i say bring on New Years, and 2010!

And a partridge in a pear tree (or, Christmas Part 1)

We've had so many Christmas festivities in the last week that i don't even know where to start, so I'll start at the very beginning, because that's where Maria from the Sound of Music says you should start, and she seems like a pretty smart lady.



A few months ago, Leah, Romina and I toyed with the idea of having a traditional Christmas in July, cause hello, how fun does that sound? Except with everyones busy schedules, July turned into August and August into September, and so we thought we'd just do the real thing in December instead. Romina started a tradition a few years ago of having a 'Cousin's Christmas' with just a few of the closest young ones, so we thought we'd do it again this year and make Leah an honorary cousin for the day, cause she's practically family anyway. We planned menus, discussed decorations, narrowed down a guest list and arranged a Kris Kringle. It's all fun and games, of course, until the day actually arrives and you realise you have 5 hours of cooking ahead of you and 13 people to feed at the end of it. Not to mention a house to clean.



Still, we'd gotten ourselves into it, so Leah and I headed to the shops on the morning of the great event (5 days before Christmas, cause that's the intelligent thing to do), and began what will forever be known as the Great Christmas Dinner Shopping Disaster of '09. I call it this because although we had a very firm, very clear list of things we needed to buy, a meltdown 10 minutes in saw us scrambling around like lunatics wondering whether or not we needed brandy cream. For what? No idea, but it just seemed so festive. Which became the word of the day. Was it festive? Then we needed it. Gold coins? How can you have Christmas without gold coins? In the trolley they went. Oranges? Oranges are SO Christmas-ey, plus, i could use them as decorations. In the trolley they went. Cranberries? It simply wouldn't be a traditional Christmas without them. And what were we going to do with them? "We'll just put them on the plate with the ham," said Leah vaguely. In the trolley they went.



After an hour wandering around the supermarket in this fashion, we realised we had absolutely nothing on the list, especially the smoked salmon Romina specifically asked we purchase for her old-fashioned seafood cocktail starter. Next thing i know, i look in the shopping trolley and there lie 5 boxes of frozen berries. "What," i asked Leah with strained patience, "are these for?" "Berries are very festive," she replied. "We can make some sort of dessert out of them." "But what about the salmon? WHERE is the salmon?" This became my plaintive cry throughout the rest of the expedition. It was, i note, the very last thing we hastily threw in the trolley, right after a heated argument about cheeses, of which we bought three and used none.



In the end, i did draw the line at all those berries. A stack of them were left with the poor checkout girl, who also had to wait as we ran back and forth (correction, as Leah ran back and forth) to get products with barcodes on them, cause we seemed to have several without, cause we're lucky like that.



Shopping finally done, we headed back home where i proceeded to have what i like to call a small panic attack at the stress of it all. Luckily, Leah averted the crisis by putting on Home Alone. and before i knew it i was back in the spirit of things. In a moment of Martha Stewart genius, we created what i believe to be the most beautifully decorated Christmas table in all of Sydney. I mean seriously. The oranges were a stroke of brilliance on my part. See below for confirmation.










Once the decorating was done, we realised we couldn't put off starting to cook any longer, and it was at that moment that Romina arrived, a gift from Heaven because let's be honest, without her direction i do not know WHAT we would have served up. The next few hours were a blur of cookery and alcohol (cause French Martini's, after all, just look so festive, and Mel really does know how to make 'em strong).

Now, let me just say a word about the ham. The ham was one of those things that ended up in the trolley even though it wasn't on the list. But after all, it is Christmas, and Leah and I both reasoned you couldn't have Christmas without a festive ham. Still, we had no idea what to do with said ham. So we called in Chris to make some sort of marinade for us, and Daniel looked up how to cook it in a recipe book, and hey presto - we had ourselves the most delicious ham I'd ever eaten. AND, you see through this narrative how everyones been helping out? The spirit of Christmas was alive and well in our little apartment that day. But back to the ham. The clincher for me was the cloves and oranges (see? see how oranges come in handy when cooking a Christmas feast?) which we stuck to that fine pork leg like glue. Succulently cooked, it turned out perfectly. I can still taste it as we speak. Good work gang.

Everyone about to eat

Me and Peter and my festive cocktail

Leah and Chris pull a bonbon (the ultimate in festive-ness)

So we ate and ate and ate, chicken and ham and prawns and scallops and salads and roast potato's and sweet potato's and honey carrots and Lord was it good. We even had mince pies. And just when you thought it couldn't get more festive, BAM. It just did baby. Cause Leah and I pulled out the homemade mulled wine. That's right people, you read correctly. Mulled wine. Tis the season.

Our mulled wine, spices, orange peel and all. I mean how festive is a cinnamon stick, seriously?

By this point, we were all of us suitably inebriated (well, just a little bit), and Jack was ready to open presents. So he kindly handed out everyones Kris Kringle's, before diving into his own from me and Jo - a microwave and kitchen/grill set which he loves. It comes with food you can cook, knives and forks and plates and cooking utensils, and the microwave actually whirs, so how cool is that.

And then as soon as it had begun, it was all over! And a very good time, i think, was had by all. It was great start to the Christmas week, and everyone got involved, which was great.

On Monday, Jo and I braved Westfields again for some last minute Christmas shopping, (after all, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without that familiar Westfields Christmas panic that sets in around week two in December). Then Tuesday i caught up with three of my greatest friends for our traditional Christmas dinner at Chinta Ria, one of our favourite places to eat. And here they are...!

Sonali, Kat and Faatasi (nice pose, homie)

Wednesday, Maria, Peter and I took Jack to get his photo taken with Santa Claus, which was both painful and hilarious - painful because it took us an hour of queuing to actually GET to Santa, and let me tell you now, no matter how nice they decorate Santa's Cave in David Jones, you're still in amongst what feels like hundreds of screaming children all waiting their turn to use a toy or get a balloon....ack, takes the Merry right out of Christmas. And hilarious because for all his excitement to see Santa, the minute we actually got in there he took one look at that red suit and white beard, did a 360 and high-tailed it outta there - or tried to, at least. He wanted no part of the picture-taking whatsoever, and it took a good ten minutes of everyone sitting with Santa and talking to Santa and high-fiving Santa for him to feel the slightest bit comfortable with getting on with it. The picture itself is funny - although he's smiling (and that's only because Maria, Peter and I were standing behind the camera behaving like buffoons), he's also leaning as far away from Santa as he can. Hilarious.



And on a last note, because this entry has already been far too long, we ended up that night at my parents place for dinner, and my brother and Ashley brought the dogs down to wish us good tidings for the festive season...

As you can see, Reggie and Ennis got right into the Christmas Spirit, and we hope you did too - more on the rest of our celebrations later, but for now, i hope you all had the merriest of Christmases - because we certainly did :)

Well. Go ahead and call me Wifey....

...cause I'm gettin' hitched people. (Not today or anything. But eventually.) Firstly i MUST thank everyone for their well-wishes!! We've gotten so many texts and phone calls and emails and facebook messages and even a card (thanks Daniel and Romina! our first card!!) from our family and friends that we're just feel so gosh-darn loved right now.



So now you'll be able to follow the adventures of wedding planning on this blog, and i will take bets right now on whether y'all think I'm going to turn into a Bridezilla or not - i say no, of course that could never happen. Jo laughs in the face of this proclamation and says I'm already 3 steps away from wedding-meltdown. Lies, i tell you, lies.




Anyway, first things first - here's my BEAUTIFUL ring which I'm SO in love with....(from three different angles, cause HA I'm the bride and i can do what i want.) (What's that you say? Bridezilla? I don't know what you mean...)

Details we know so far? Not a whole lot, except that we're looking at a March 2011 wedding. March cause it's such a nice time of year, not too warm and not cool yet either (though with all the crazy weather lately, who the hell knows how any day will turn out). December is a write off cause it's Christmas, and then New Years, so from January that gives me (i mean us) 14 months of planning, which is pleeeeeenty of time. Surely. And I'm not going to be lazy, like i have been with my Christmas shopping. I'm going to be totally vigilant about getting things done on time, and I'm not going to get distracted one bit. I swear. O_O

We've already done just a spot of celebrating, with my bestie Leah (who is going to be my beautiful maid of honour) and Chris. I told her before we told everyone else (sorry kids) and she wasted no time in racing over with some chilled champers and a stack of wedding magazines - what a gal! Now, its true things got slightly out of hand once the bubbly was knocked back and the Backstreet Boys came on...but other than that, it was a totally civil celebration. For realsies.

Chris looking absolutely delighted at our news (and not at all staging his smile under Leah's artful direction)

Chin chin! Check those wine glasses out. The class i tell you, the class.

Leah thinks Jo is so hilarious, which is lucky, cause I'm stuck with him now.

The happy couple. (Me and Jo i mean. There aren't any other happy couples in this picture that i can see)

Me and the lovely Leah!

So there you have it folks. Am i the luckiest kid on the block? You betcha. Cause i get to marry the bestest guy and my bestest friend, and that is the truth. No more mushiness from me though. Cause wedding fever starts...now.

It's sharp. Razor.

I asked Jo to give me a witty blog title for tonight's blog about our weekend. "But we didn't do anything," he pointed out. Fair enough. But still. Make something from nothing. "OK. Call it "Visiting your parents and Paranormal Activity."" Not what i had in mind really, i explained, cause it's not very funny or interesting, you see. "But it succinctly describes what we did," he protested, "It's sharp! Razor!" And so i christen thee: It's Sharp. Razor.




That delightful anecdote leads me into what we did this weekend, which honestly, wasn't very much. Which is cool by me, cause we needed the rest. For realsies. We have been soooo tired it's not even funny. I can't even remember the last time i had a whole, free weekend. Not a free DAY. A free WEEKEND. Ya. Forever. So, we totally bummed out and relaxed, and God said it was good. I finished my book, we watched pleeeenty of TV (I'm talking awesome Christmas specials on the food channel like Nigella's Christmas and Jaimie Oliver's Christmas and the Great British Christmas Menu and The River Cottage Christmas and OH it was grand. I love watching people make delicious food that i have absolutely no intention of trying myself.)




Anyway, we weren't total bums. We did go out to see my parents so Jo could finish up the Christmas lights on the house, which is looking very nice indeed. While we were out there, we took a little tour of the suburbs cause as i said in my last post, Christmas lights are all the rage again. As i have decided it is my duty to bring you constant Christmas cheer this December, here are some of the best efforts:

On Sunday, we decided against trying to beat our personal record for number of hours spent inside doing nothing, and instead ventured into the Christmas rush madness of the city to see a movie and take a walk. The movie of choice was Paranormal Activity, which has received plenty of hype about how scary it is, and y'all know how much Jo and I love scary movies - except that Jo never actually GETS scared, so that kinda sucks. Never more true than in this movie, which had me cowering under my cardigan (yeah, i wear cardigans. what's the issue?), while Jo stretched nonchalantly in his seat predicting everything that was about to happen onscreen. Anyway, if you get scared easily, you'll definitely get scared in this. You don't realise how tense you are the whole film until it ends.

Afterwards, we took a walk down to Circular Quay where a cruise ship was just about ready to take off (how we lamented the fact that we weren't on it! damn you work! damn you capitalism!)

Jo stares longingly at all the people about to embark on a lovely holiday while we have to go to work the next day. Note how i have lined up the flag on the harbour bridge to look as though they are about to enter his nose (cause I'm mature like that).

Luckily, we reasoned, this week is the last FULL week of work till January - and that was worth a smile.

Spreading some yuletide cheer

So we've decorated my parents house, but our little apartment has remained sadly neglected this holiday season. I finally had some time this week though, so we put up our Christmas tree and the whole place is looking much more festive, just they way i like it thank you very much. Because hello, how can we sing O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree to a blank space? For the sake of a-carolling, i had to spruce the place up.

Our blue reindeer (it doesn't matter that reindeer's aren't really blue. creative liberties and all that)

Of all the trees most lovely.

Lights out. Joy to the world.

And its not just us getting into the Christmas spirit. We were out in the 'burbs earlier this week, and lo, we came upon the joy of Christmas every which way we turned....(Christmas lights, it seems, are back in vogue. Everyone is so doing it this year.)

Some of the better houses...

And of course, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Christmas treats. Mince pies, gingerbread men, and of course, the Starbucks Christmas range - the only, and i mean ONLY time drinking drinking anything from Starbucks is even remotely acceptable. If you know me, you know i loves me my coffee. Starbucks is a blight on the whole coffee industry. At any other time of year, go to your local Italian cafe and get yourself a proper cup - please, i urge you. But come December - well, even i can't resist a toffee nut latte.

In other news.....huh. There is no other news. We watched District 9 the other night, which was weeeeeeeeird. I liked it though. And I've been reading like a maniac - highlights were Disgrace by J.M Coetzee, which won the Booker Prize AND the Nobel Prize in Literature...its set in post-apartheid South Africa, which complicates everything that happens in the novel. I gave it to DT to read after I'd finished, cause i knew we'd have some good discussions about the whole thing...read it! Disturbing, but thought-provoking. If you're into mindless chick-lit, i also read Confessions of a Shopaholic, which was very light and fluffy, and just what i needed! And right now, I'm reading an awesome novel called The Gargoyle, which I'm not even going to go into, just TRUST ME and read it.

Birthday Celebrations Part the Second

And God said, 'Let the festivities continue!' National holidays were declared in some countries. It was front page news in New Zealand. On Friday night, we headed out to a restaurant called Prime, in the GPO building in Martin Place. Lovely setting (we got out own cosy little section off to the side), pretty nice food too, without being overwhelming. Of course, the company was outstanding (thanks Leah! thanks Chris! thanks Argiro! thanks Mel!) and a few bottles of wine later, we were ready to carry on into the night. We ended up at The Loft for champagne, because who doesn't love champagne? Who? You? Bah. You don't know what you're talking about.

Jo and in a prime position at Prime. (I know. One of my best.)

David and Mel put on their best seductive looks. (I fell for it.)

Meaty


Chris, me and Leah looking almost too happy.

Everyone loves a group shot

Leah and I

Unfortunately, the next morning i had to get up at a relatively decent hour to go shopping for the BBQ we would be having with 20 people later that day. The night before, of course, i blithely waved away any notion that this would be a problem. When i was jerked awake by the shrill of the alarm, however, i saw things a little differently. (Jo calls this feeling "the harsh reality of daylight".) Nonetheless, the chore could not be avoided, so off we trotted to Westfields where the traditional It's-Nearly-Christmas panic seemed to have set in. Ahh the holidays.

Some of my wonderful friends and family came over to help me cook and prepare - thanks Maria! thanks Sonali! thanks Adam! (who also stayed until the very end, helping me clean all the grotty left-overs and showing me just how easy it is to pack a dishwasher to capacity without wanting to hurl plates at the wall in frustration) - and were entertained by Jack, who was very fascinated by Adams iPhone, and its ability to play Chris Brown on command.

Jack learns about technology (as all 2 year olds should...)

As the masses arrived and the party got started, i reflected on my uncanny ability to get other people to do all the crap work for me. Where, for example, would i be without Tony, BBQ-er extraordinaire, always willing to stand over a hot grill and be the last one to eat, always willing to clean up the mess, always there to calm me down when i freak out because i think there won't be enough food (only a fellow wog could understand the sheer terror of this possibility).

Men-folk - Con, Jo, Tony and DT

The gang(ers)

Jack and I

The night ended as they always seem to - watching music videos, singing, and making fun of the 80s. What an era to have been born in, and what a lucky gal i am to have such great people to spend my birthday with.

I'm off to spread some yuletide cheer by decorating our Christmas tree and annoying the boys with Christmas Carols. Cause y'all know that once you get Jingle Bells in your head, there ain't no getting it out, suckerrrrs.