Las *makes an angry face*

Col ‘What’s up?’

Las ‘I don’t have honey for gingerbread men, man, this baking thing is the most expensive hobby I’ve ever taken up’

Col ‘Well, as long as you’re not taking surgery up as a hobby’

haha! Yes guys & gals, I did what an overwhelming number of Americans did last week…I baked! *insert some horror film music here*

The last few days have been crazier than I thought they’d be.  Has anyone seen the episode of the Cosby show where Bill keeps getting sent out for things that they’d forgotten to pick up in time for Christmas? Well, I haven’t, but it was kind of like that here.  Only both of us kept popping out to pick stuff up.

Wednesday this week started off well, Col went into work to wait for our turkey to be delivered.  When midday came, turkey arrived and Col drove home to finish his day working from home.  He had a server change that night (or something too high for my brow!) and one guy in particular overseas had it in his head that we were in Europe and not the US and called Col at various points throughout the night – it wasn’t a fun night at all.  It left Col with around 3 and a half hours sleep.  Ugh.

Thursday Col worked from home, we watched a little TV in the evening and around 7pm Col kept nodding off on the sofa, out cold (not that I blame him, I couldn’t have stayed up as long as he did on as little sleep!) around 8pm I sent him to bed, (he said for a ‘nap’, but 25 minutes later I heard him slapping off his alarm). 

It was around this point, I lost my marbles!

I opened the pantry and got out a bunch of ingredients.  My first stop was Shortbread dough – when I was done with that I realised I needed more ingredients to do the other things I’d planned on trying – yes, this is my first baking experience (aside from eating the dough that Amber makes when I visit!).

I went for a merry little trip to HEB for supplies.  HEB was pretty busy for 9pm but it was pretty harmless – aside from the fact I underestimated what I needed, took a basket, needed a trolley and ended up with bruises on my forearms from carrying flour around like a nutcase trying to find cookie cutters.

At home, I made pinwheel cookie dough (which I ended up being unhappy with and would make slightly differently if I were to do it again) and gingerbread dough, cleaned the kitchen a little and climbed in to bed. 

Col woke when he heard me climbing the stairs after midnight and I reminded him we’d not yet done the trifles so, yup, we got up and made midnight trifle – ok, more like 1am trifle but that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it!

Christmas Eve, I got up early and kicked my baking into overdrive. 

After a while, Col joined me and he got stuck in to helping with the baking – in fact, I think he quite liked cutting out shapes from the dough! 

We cut little gingerbread people, pinwheel cookies, shortbread, I hand dipped strawberries into chocolate almond bark, white chocolate almond bark and pecans and although we were supposed to be at Emily and Luke’s house for midday, at 11.50am we were both still in our pjs trying to get the last of the baking done before we left! Whoops!

 

 

 

Lunch was a delicious quiche made by the wonderful Nigella Lawson…er…I mean, Emily! 😉

We arrived to find her glammed up, looking stunning, cooking lunch complete with pinny and heels – I swear, her talents know now bounds! All enjoyed a nice glass of our favourite non alcoholic apple cider, some delicious cheese, bread and some of the Van der Waals home made Christmas Chutney.  Now, in the past I’ve never really taken to chutney.  My friend Becky keeps trying to convert me, but it’s just never worked.  This stuff, however? Man I must have ate half the jar – and suddenly got VERY excited for Boxing day! They’d given us a jar back at Thanksgiving, which, we were informed, would be ready to eat around Christmas so we’re going to tuck into that jar – yum! They should open a little cafe, cause they’d do great!

After lunch, the 4 of us headed out to the Alley Theatre in Houston where we got to watch a stage production of ‘A Christmas Carol’.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, I thought it’d be tailored more toward kids and what not but as it turned out it was almost ‘dark’ and it was fantastic. 

We thoroughly enjoyed it!

There was barely an empty seat in the house, the guy who played Scrooge was fantastic, the production side of things, lighting, costumes etc were fab too! (and I even managed to do a little knitting during it too!). 

It was great, well worth the money and we’d definitely go back if we stay here again next year – I’m soooooo glad Em and Luke asked us to go with them.

In spite of feeling a bit Christmassy and what not, we’d gotten a little low.  Most of our friends went home for Christmas, or have family in town, or have kids or whatever so we needed that to pick us up and it really helped make us feel like it was Christmas time!

Traditionally, at home, on Christmas Eve we’d get a chinese take out in for dinner.  However, due to the Chinese here being not particularly Christmas-Eve-worthy and the fact that we had a $5 off coupon for Red Robin, we decided that we’d take a little trip down to Pearland to indulge a little.  Dinner was delicious and we took a box o’grub home with us complete with the remnants of Col’s chocolate Malt (think a malteasers milkshake for those of you from home!).

 

I got home to a huge bunch of flowers from my daddy, there were so many of them that I had to split them into 3 separate vases – which worked out well, cause it brought some colour into 3 different rooms in our house!

The flowers were accompanied by a lovely little teddy bear and box of chocolates!  At home after dinner since we had a few hours before midnight mass, a preparation and cleaning bug struke me.  I peeled and cut veg and spuds for Christmas dinner and boxing day and cleaned the kitchen, kitchen floor, stacked, washed and unstacked the dishwasher, washed the excess dishes, put on two loads of washing/drying and sat down with my wonderful hubby to watch ‘Grumpy Old Women’ on BBC I-player.

Midnight mass was so much fun! Christmas carols are such wonderful pieces of music.  They had a chamber ensemble, musicians and a choir who were singing a mix of songs from the hymn book and a prepared set list.  I sang like no one was listening – and, in truth, aside from Col, they weren’t.  Many people sang and it was lovely.

The service itself didn’t do much for me, other than to serve as a reminder about how much of a bitter taste my Convent School upbringing has left with me and how much I yearn for more of a ‘non-judgemental’ faith, a faith that encourages your positives instead of high-lighting your negatives and finger-pointing how bad of a person you are and making you terrified of going to hell.  So, I’m in the market for a church to go to – because I enjoyed the experience of being there and again, it made me feel all the more Christmassy as a result.

We got home around 1.30am, at home, the Curran’s Christmas tradition is to open 1 present on Christmas eve.  We did open 1 present, just 1. 

Until around 2am when we decided that if we wanted a lie-in in the morning that we should open our presents – I’m like a kid at Christmas, so, if we didn’t, chances are I’d have been up at the crack of dawn beating Col over the head with his presents til he opened them and since we’re both exhausted this week (I have a cold), we figured, we’d open our gifts, turn off the ringer on the phones and enjoy a nice lie-in on Christmas morning.

Present opening was fun! fun! fun! I was spoilt rotten! hehe!!

Col and I had decided on a small-present Christmas this year.  We figured since we only had presents from each other under the tree that we should go for a number of small things so we had a bunch of stuff to open.  I came out on with a gorgeous Roots zippy hoody (I LOVE Roots so he did a great job on this one!), a 100ml bottle of Cerutti 1881 French Collection (special edition), a bunch of ‘Lush’ bath bombs (yay! I used my last one a week ago), Crystal Bowersox and Ke$ha album’s and the final season of The Tudors.  I can’t BEGIN to tell y’all just how thrilled I was with everything!

I bought Col a selection of movies, books, cds and bric-a-brac, he tells me he loves it all and I was spot on the money this year! yay!

Before long, it was 3am and I was cooking us up some sausage sandwiches.  Yes, it is quite possibly the worst thing to eat at that time of night, but neither of us cared much at all.  Col tracked down some ‘proper’ pork sausages in Fiesta and the two of us fancied a nibble – so, nibble we did!

We turned off all phones, climbed into bed in our new Christmas pjs and had a lovely, long night’s sleep.

Christmas morning, I woke up (at 11am, yay for lie-ins!) feeling like, well, like utter crap to be frank.  A cold is royally kicking my backside!  I busied myself for an hour until Col woke up and I made some pancakes with bacon and maple syrup (yum!) and I got the turkey on the go.

Between starting to watch ‘Have I got News for You’, putting Speedy the turtle in a bigger habitat for the day (which we later discovered wasn’t water tight and coincidently had to mop up a minorly flooded kitchen!) and keeping an eye on the turkey, the phone rang a few times.  My dad called, so Col and I both got to talk with both my dad and my brother Rowan and a while later, the McKee’s called and both Col and I got to talk with both Paul and Lynsey – I could talk to them all day, it’s dangerous to let me on the phone to those two! LOL!

After we decided to meet in Tokyo with a bottle of  Johnny Walker Blue, I got back to work with the Turkey and the rest of dinner.  Col helped out and the two of us took care of business, smoked turkey, lamb, beef, roasties and layonaisse, veggies, apple cider gravy, stuffing piled high – it was delicious (if I do say so myself!).

 

We cleared our plates, stuck all the left overs in the fridge, stacked the dishwasher and did dishes before finally getting around to finishing ‘Have I got News for You’. 

For those of you who don’t know, our bath is big enough for 2.  One of my favourite things to do is have a bath with Col, both of us reading a book sipping on a wee glass of wine in the jet tub which is how we finished off the evening – although instead of reading books we got to play with one of Col’s favourite presents this year, Crayola Bathtub Doodlers (above)! haha! what fun!

When we’d had a nice relaxing bath, we loaded up the dvd player and watched ‘The Invention of Lying’, grabbed a bottle of wine and some chocolate (yay for Terry’s chocolate orange!) and snuggled up in bed while watching tv all evening – it was bliss.

This is the first year ever that I’ve not been with my family on Christmas day and, in spite of missing my family a lot, I had a fantastic day with my wonderful hubby.  We really enjoyed our own little Christmas.  It was the first year we’ve just sat still and not run around town and country and we both loved it!

Christmas night we stayed up til 4am watching movies and tv shows, we enjoyed a selection of cold meats, cheeses, crackers etc while watching TV. 

Boxing day, I lost even more of my marbles – or, I had a moment of pure genius, we’ll see next year when it’s time to do our Christmas shopping!

At 6.20am I got up and went to Walmart,

much to Col’s dismay – as you can see from the above picture! The place was so much more mental and insane than I expected, people had no less than one trolley and more commonly they had 2! TWO full trolleys of clearance Christmas stuff – geez!

I spent a small fortune, but I got a bunch of Christmas stuff we had our eye on this year and a bunch of Christmas presents for next year (yes, I start early!) and a bunch of clearance ‘Christmas’ tupperware, by Christmas, I mean they are a little glittery but they’re no more Christmassy than the clearance Ferrero Rocher that I picked up too! The tupperware was only $1.08 for a set – that’s seriously stupid in my opinion, clearancing stuff that’s neither Christmassy or going out of date soon, however, it worked in my favour!

I got home, unpacked everything on the counter so I could show my incredulous hubby (he couldn’t believe I was insane enough to get up after only 2 hours sleep and go shopping for next years Christmas presents!

I switched cars (I much, much, MUCH prefer my car to his and it has heated seats which was a huge relief cause it was quite nippy out this morning!) and headed to Kohls, picked up a few small Christmas pieces on clearance, and then it was on to Target…

…which also didn’t go so well as far as Col’s concerned (his idea of a successful shop is one which lasts less than 5 minutes and doesn’t need a trolley, or a basket for that matter! LOL!).  As you can see, I got mostly storage supplies, a wrapping paper tub, two large storage boxes, wrapping paper, bows and kitchen roll cause we’ve run out. 

If you ask me, it was a very successful morning of shopping! lol!

We enjoyed a nice lunch of homemade chips, cold cuts, potato salad, coleslaw, beetroot afterwhich I swiftly took a 2 hour nap before an evening of curry and NCIS!

It’s been quite the week for us, but we’ve both had a wonderful time and got lots of gifts that are currently taking over my living room!