Blogmas 4 – Christmas In My House

Welcome back to Blogmas. Today is Day 4 and I’m going to share how we do Christmas in my house. Some of this has already been touched on in Why I Celebrate Christmas but I wanted to go into more details on just how I like to do things every year.I love Christmas. I love everything about it; the cold weather, people rushing about in a panic buying last-minute gifts and the madness of the season.

I love the over-eating, over-indulging and the socialising. But most of all I love that it’s a reason to unwind, laze around and my favourite bit is spending warm and cosy days with my family.Christmas starts as soon as October has landed for me. All of our birthdays fall in November so it’s pretty much a month of celebration for us.

It means I have to almost put Christmas on the back-burner. I hate being caught out on the first of December and it’s simply too late for me to get into gear.

So I start my planning around October. I draw up a list of all the people I am giving gifts to and start shopping. I mostly do it online and have the majority of the gifts in my possession by Halloween.This year though, we went to the Dominican Republic at half-term. It meant October was also cut short for my Christmas prep. I did spend some lazy moment on my sun lounger though, shopping for gifts online.

Once the presents are out of the way, I can focus on the fun stuff. We decorate the house and put up the tree on the first of December. I love it when the house looks festive and we go all out on decking the halls!We open our advent calendars each day and have to stop Shivam from eating all of his chocolates in one go! I started Elf On The Shelf last year and will write more about that in a later post. I start that from the 1st of December too.

Our Elves are called Sugar and Spice. Shalini says she’s way too old for this now as she just turned thirteen and so is now officially a teen. My response to her? ‘I’m 41-years-old. I still love getting all gooey and gaga over Christmas. So if I can, you can’. I know deep down she still loves the spirit of the season too.Shalini doesn’t write letters to Santa anymore, however. She writes a huge list for us instead! Shivam writes a letter though and he always gets one back from too. Santa hasn’t ever missed posting a reply since Shivam could read.He gets so excited when the envelope arrives, addressed to him. No matter how many tantrums he’s had over the year or even during the festive season, Santa still doesn’t have the heart to put him on the naughty list.During December, we make a visit to the Christmas Market in Birmingham City Centre. We will make our visit in a couple of weeks and I’ll share that with you during Blogmas.

We watch the pantomime at the Birmingham Hippodrome without fail and visit a grotto too.There’s a nice balance of activity throughout December. We have lots of days out as well as spending time indoors, playing board games, watching movies and baking goodies.

Shalini helps me wrap all the gifts and we’ve usually had them all distributed by Christmas week. That’s when a big family jigsaw comes out and we leave it laid out on our dining table. It’s one of the things we love doing as a family.During the month, there are a few get togethers on both Sukh’s side of the family and mine. We also have a couple of evenings or lunches with our friends.

So Christmas Eve, we reserve for ourselves as a four; watching movies, trying to finish our jigsaw puzzle and eating way too much. I usually cook a curry on this night, as we like a bit of spice before we head into a couple of days’ of roast dinners!

This year, I have decided to make up Christmas Eve boxes for the kids but I won’t reveal what will be in them till later as they will read this post, no doubt.Christmas morning is usually a bit of a lazy one. You would think the kids would rush down at first light but they prefer a bit of a lie in after a late night. We go down in our pyjamas and take turns opening our gifts so we can see the expressions on each others’ faces. Sukh films the whole thing every year.

For the last couple of years, the kids have eagerly used some of their pocket money to buy small gifts for each other and Sukh and I. I think it’s nice that they’re generous in spirit. They think it’s unfair that Mummy and Daddy don’t have as many gifts to open as they do.After a big breakfast, we get ready and head to Sukh’s parents’ place where we eat our lunch. We spend a few hours there before heading home for board games and of course, the obligatory episode of Eastenders.

We like to do our own dinner on Boxing Day. Sukh and I do the big shop together. We buy a turkey (normally too big for all of us so we have plenty of leftovers), a leg of lamb and all the trimmings. Roast potatoes are my specialty whereas Sukh looks after the meat dishes. His sage and onion pork stuffing is to die for.We spend the rest of our time off cuddled up indoors, with lots of films, hot drinks and snacks.

Make sure you check out my other Blogmas posts.