Easter Christmas – A new holiday is born!

You may remember that I was in Australia for most of last year and therefore missed my traditional family Christmas at home. I had a lovely Christmas with my adopted second family in Melbourne, The Grahams, but, eventhough I’m not a massive fan of the festive season, there’s nothing quite like your own Mum’s Christmas Dinner. So the long and short of it is, I made her buy an extra turkey and keep it in the freezer until I got home so that we could have a re-run on Easter Sunday. Now my family being as they are got a bit carried away. Not only did she buy an extra turkey but crackers and a Christmas pudding as well. We went up into the loft at my sister’s house and dug out their box of decorations, put up fairy lights and tinsel and decorated the mini Christmas tree with wooden eggs and a chick instead of a fairy. We sprinkled Christmas confetti and baubles on the table, sat around getting merrily tipsy in our Christmas hats whilst the neighbours walking past who happened to glance through the window smirked and thought we were mad! It was lovely, so much nicer than real Christmas; no ridiculous hype starting four months before, no rushing around trying to buy presents that people won’t like or need and having to feign some joy when you unwrap the awful whatever it is that they’ve bought you, it was warm, we didn’t have to go to church or to any awful office Christmas parties and we didn’t have to invite the family members that we only see at Christmas, in fact we didn’t invite anyone else, just Mum, Dad, me, my brother, his girlfriend, my sister and her fiancé. Best of all was the cold turkey, chips and salad that we had on Easter Boxing Day, quite possibly one of my all time favourite meals and an alien concept to our antipodean cousins....

A slightly deranged looking Easter Christmas Tree fairy

Mini chocolate marshmallow Christmas puds that I made
for those of us that don’t like yucky real Christmas pudding

How an Easter Christmas table should look!

Now if all Christmases could be like this, I would be a much bigger fan!

A progress report

The last few weeks have been a total blur of catching up with people, gadding about the country generally having a marvellous time. New houses have been visited, babies cooed over, engagement rings admired, fiancés met, vast amounts of BBQ/picnic/pub food and cider/Pimms/bubbly have been consumed, all helped out by the unseasonably beautiful weather that we have been blessed with over here. I’ve even celebrated Easter Christmas (a new family tradition that involves Christmas dinner on Easter Sunday complete with crackers and decorations because I missed real Christmas last year!) and been on a living room safari camping trip with my godson, George.

It hasn’t all been fun and games though, I have also put some serious hours into planning hen parties for weddings 1 and 3 as well as trying on 30+ bridesmaid dresses. The good news is that we have chosen a dress (well a skirt and top) for wedding 3 and they’ve been ordered, (and not in size 18s either! Hoorah!) and are well on the way to having a most excellent hen party for Bride 1. I’m 10 days into a 2 week kick start diet and have lost 5 pounds already, which unfortunately means that eating no chocolate or cake really does pay off and it’s not just a vicious rumour circulated to make women feel guilty and miserable.

Is it any wonder that job hunting has taken a back seat when there’s so much fun to be had? or that I’m no further along with my moving to London plan? In fact I’m beginning to go off that idea...

Two worrying realisations...

1. I quite enjoyed watching the Royal Wedding - I thought it was going to be an horrendous tribute to everything I dislike about Britain and the monarchy but it turns out that it was a tasteful, romantic betrothal of two people that clearly love each other. Everyone looked lovely (ignoring of course Princess Beatrice's tapeworm hat) and happy and London looked wonderful in the sunshine in all it's Union Jack-ed glory (or is it Flag-ed? I can never remember which way round it goes). All in all a good excuse for a party and nice to have something less miserable in the news.

2. I'm not finding being involved in 5 weddings all that painful. I thought it would be a never ending misery-fest but so far I'm actually quite enjoying myself. I love planning things and writing lists so it's not surprising really that hen party organisation is turning out to be quite good fun. Although that might all change as the blessed events draw closer...

Clearly I'm broken and need to find a job as soon as possible in order to reawaken my jelly-like brain and get some sensible perspective!