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Will

Christmas 2020

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Today we put up our tree and set up the train set. I’m very ready for Christmas this year but it’s going to be a bit of a weird one.

We’d been planning to go back to the UK but have now cancelled this. I’m pretty upset by that but we’ll make the most of Christmas here and then travel back whenever we can next year. At least it will be cheaper I guess.

As a new addition to the tree I bought some smart tree lights this year - they’re great! Various different designs to pick from and they work really well to make the tree something a bit special - I thoroughly recommend them.

So what have you all got planned? Are your Christmas lists ready yet?

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20 minutes ago, Will said:

Today we put up our tree and set up the train set. I’m very ready for Christmas this year but it’s going to be a bit of a weird one.

We’d been planning to go back to the UK but have now cancelled this. I’m pretty upset by that but we’ll make the most of Christmas here and then travel back whenever we can next year. At least it will be cheaper I guess.

As a new addition to the tree I bought some smart tree lights this year - they’re great! Various different designs to pick from and they work really well to make the tree something a bit special - I thoroughly recommend them.

So what have you all got planned? Are your Christmas lists ready yet?

You've broken the first rule of a post saying your tree is up. Pics required! 

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Assuming people are allowed to visit other homes again by Christmas then I think my sister and her family should be round. I need to start buying Christmas presents soon but as usual I have no idea what to get anyone. 

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42 minutes ago, Mr-Paul said:

You've broken the first rule of a post saying your tree is up. Pics required! 

It was a calculated error to make sure I had an additional excuse to post in here. Daytime pic below:

872A9D51-2C76-4E32-A5A7-8CF018354D94.jpeg.62c5d011b1937be7f38eed31633cb05b.jpeg

Once it gets dark I’ll try to show how the smart lights work.

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For the first time in, possibly ever, we’ve actually started planning what Christmas presents to get people in November (as opposed to the December last minute panic! 😃).

What we actually do for Christmas or how we see our families is still very much tied into how many people will be allowed in a household.  We’re going on the assumption that it will be a maximum of 6, so this will be at least three trips to be able to see all close family members.

Nice tree though @Will 👍🏻

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No idea. Presume it will be at my mom's or nan's but will see. Apparently my mom is already planning for me to hire them all and claim it as a "work meeting" if bigger gatherings aren't allowed but it would be 6 of us anyway.

Did however get a very early Christmas present from my bosses the other day. Turned up at my nan's house (where I've registered my business as I'm always moving) and it was only days later when my mom went down that she could read the invoice well enough to spot the names of the bosses. Provided a little mystery for a while as to where this John Lewis hamper had come from! Least that's some of the Christmas day food sorted.

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Same here although this year, I'm going to buy some decorations a little earlier. Three guesses what theme I'm going for?...okay, it's obviously a Disney one. I'm also going to get myself a stocking...I've never had a stocking and I want to try and get myself into the Christmas spirit this year.

As for my list, I'm buying myself Klonoa on the Wii and I might get myself Spiderman: Miles Morales or Assassin's Creed Valhalla for the PS4. 

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16 minutes ago, Beast said:

Same here although this year, I'm going to buy some decorations a little earlier. Three guesses what theme I'm going for?...okay, it's obviously a Disney one. I'm also going to get myself a stocking...I've never had a stocking and I want to try and get myself into the Christmas spirit this year.

As for my list, I'm buying myself Klonoa on the Wii and I might get myself Spiderman: Miles Morales or Assassin's Creed Valhalla for the PS4. 

Personally I thought it was going to be a homage to all the horrible bosses you've had during the years. 

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On 21/11/2020 at 9:28 PM, Ashley said:

Personally I thought it was going to be a homage to all the horrible bosses you've had during the years. 

That's not a bad idea but I think 2020 has been depressing enough already, haha.

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Someone said Christmas. So I'm here.

Normally Christmas decorating for us would be this weekend, as we don't tend to do it more than a month before, but its 2020 and everyone gets a free pass. This year we've been trying to decorate all rooms, not just the living room, to give a bit of cheer as its been a rough one for both of us. 

We've still got a few more decorations to get as we had to chuck out a crap load of stuff this year (damaged or cheapy). 

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The reindeer is my favourite, we gave him a name once, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. We bought him as a joke about three years ago, but he's grown on us. 

 

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We made baby handprint baubles to send home for the family, it was... interesting. Seems to have worked out OK in the end but you wouldn’t know we spend multiple days re-doing and cleaning them off to get something close to a hand on them. They better be happy with them!

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Today I did our butcher pre-order for Christmas. Have the following:

  • 4kg turkey
  • 600g pork stuffing
  • 6 venison chipolata
  • 12 pork chipolata
  • 2.5kg kurobuta ham
  • cranberry sauce

Still a few additional things I want to get but this is a pretty decent start. Pick it up on December 22nd to give us a few days for prep before the big day. Anyone have any personal tips on good food to pick up?

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On 21/11/2020 at 9:11 PM, Beast said:

Same here although this year, I'm going to buy some decorations a little earlier. Three guesses what theme I'm going for?...okay, it's obviously a Disney one.

OK, yeah. Really late reply, I know. But I just had to say that seeing your profile pic and you talking about Christmas immediately gave me this image.

Beauty_and_the_Beast_The_Enchanted_Chris

Nothing says Christmas like a straight-to-video Disney movie that pales in comparison to the original classic!

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It is weird having all my Christmas shopping for family and friends done so early this year. Normally it would come to the wire where everything is bought with a day or two spare but here I am just needing to wrap everything now and it's only the 5th.

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On 29/11/2020 at 8:53 AM, Will said:

We made baby handprint baubles to send home for the family, it was... interesting. Seems to have worked out OK in the end but you wouldn’t know we spend multiple days re-doing and cleaning them off to get something close to a hand on them. They better be happy with them!

This is a really nice idea. I'm sure your family will appreciate it.

18 hours ago, Will said:

Today I did our butcher pre-order for Christmas. Have the following:

  • 4kg turkey
  • 600g pork stuffing
  • 6 venison chipolata
  • 12 pork chipolata
  • 2.5kg kurobuta ham
  • cranberry sauce

Still a few additional things I want to get but this is a pretty decent start. Pick it up on December 22nd to give us a few days for prep before the big day. Anyone have any personal tips on good food to pick up?

Not quite the same but I plan to order a few bits from Waitrose back to my mom's (mostly because I want some of those lemon curd mince pies but there's no Waitrose in central Birmingham) but you seem to be missing alcohol 😋

My bosses sent a Waitrose Christmas hamper and it went to my nan's as that's where my business is registered so I'm just going to add to that basically. 

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5 hours ago, nightwolf said:

My only tip:

Cover everything in goose fat and thank me later. 

This is excellent advice everyone should follow. Goose fat and semolina willl give you the best roasting you can imagine.

4 hours ago, Emerald Emblem said:

It is weird having all my Christmas shopping for family and friends done so early this year. Normally it would come to the wire where everything is bought with a day or two spare but here I am just needing to wrap everything now and it's only the 5th.

I always used to be the same but now have to make sure I’m good about it. Usually as long as we have everything by around the time we fly home it’s fine, but this year is a bit different. We sent The Package™ earlier this week and hopefully it shouldn’t take too long to arrive.

3 hours ago, Ashley said:

This is a really nice idea. I'm sure your family will appreciate it.

Yeah, hopefully it will at least in a small way feel like some part of him is with them.

3 hours ago, Ashley said:

Not quite the same but I plan to order a few bits from Waitrose back to my mom's (mostly because I want some of those lemon curd mince pies but there's no Waitrose in central Birmingham) but you seem to be missing alcohol 😋

That sounds tasty, wish we had Waitrose here. We do have M&S food which does some decent stuff at Christmas, need to go and check them out for mince pies etc. Don’t worry, the alcohol will be coming, that’s for a supermarket trip a bit closer to the big day.

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8 hours ago, Will said:

That sounds tasty, wish we had Waitrose here. We do have M&S food which does some decent stuff at Christmas, need to go and check them out for mince pies etc. Don’t worry, the alcohol will be coming, that’s for a supermarket trip a bit closer to the big day.

Yeah I had one at my PT's a few weeks back and they were great.

Good good! With the three bottles of alcohol that came with that hamper, the bottle of champagne I plan to order and undoubtedly both my mom and nan will buy some wine we're going to end up with a lot of wine considering only me, my mom and nan drink it.

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Being one of the Christmas movies that I watch pretty much every year (yeah, I’m aware how crap it is :D)but how have I only just found out that Jingle All The Way has a post-credits scene? :eek:

 

Edited by Dog-amoto

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22 hours ago, Dog-amoto said:

Being one of the Christmas movies that I watch pretty much every year (yeah, I’m aware how crap it is :D)but how have I only just found out that Jingle All The Way has a post-credits scene? :eek:

 

There's a post credits scene?! I've seen that movie so many times!! 

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1 hour ago, Beast said:

There's a post credits scene?! I've seen that movie so many times!! 

Yeah, just found it on YouTube. 

Mind. Blown. 

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Christmas tree and lights are up, nothing too fancy or abundant but it's always nice to decorate a bit! 

Tried out some recipes this weekend for when (well, at this point more "if" because apparently more Covid measures are being announced tonight) my parents and brother come over. Made an Italian bread soup, which was delicious but not very Christmas. So we'll replace that with a creamy tomato soup.

We'll make coq au biere (chicken in dark beer broth) for the meat-eaters, and tried a vegetarian recipe for the vegetarian. We made it before and it was quite okay but it tasted very oriental due to the abundance of coconut milk. So now we made it again but just left out the coconut milk and actually it tastes better like this, and a lot less oriental and more wintery/Christmassy. It's basically a stew with pumpkin, fennel, leek, chanterelles and a bunch of herbs and spices. So that made the cut! Serve both with bread and potatoes. Maybe I'll add one more side dish but I'm not sure what works well with the main courses.

Dessert will be a mocha parfait. Made that a while ago, and it was great!

So that's dinner. Will need to come up with a couple of lunch dishes as well but that will be a bit simpler. Maybe just a board with different cheeses, meats and some quality bread. And more soup.

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