Merry Christmas to you all

In the thick of it here...printing off vouchers for all the extended family who have said "just give us money" when we've asked them what they want for Christmas. We're giving them little home made vouchers for whatever they're putting the money towards.

Then we have to assemble a teepee and a sun lounge. Since the sun lounge is Chris' present, I feel like I should at least make a token attempt to put the bolt in with the Allen key that it came with. Maybe that one will be waiting until after the Christmas rush is over and we are all wanting to lie around beside the pool.

We're stuffed full of Christmas festive food this evening after our family dinner at home. After the entree we usually head down to the local Salvation Army church (the closest one to our house) to go to their Christmas Eve service, then we return home for the main course and dessert. This year, lots of ham and trifle was on the menu.

When we got home, the people across the road were giving their inflatable Santa see-saw a re-vamp. After a promising start a few weeks ago, it broke down so we haven't seen it in a while. It still doesn't seem to be going too well. Both the man and the woman who live there came out separately and I saw them poking at it to try and get it to work. I guess they only have to keep it going for tonight and then they can get rid of it.

But in amongst the busy-ness of Christmas Eve, I didn't want to forget wishing you, all of my readers (although I don't know how many of you are still hanging in there!?), a very blessed Christmas, as you remember the birth of Jesus, our Saviour and Lord.

xx

Amusing Santa photo

We don't make a big deal out of Santa here. He does visit on Christmas Eve and we leave out biscuits, carrots and a beer for him. That's about as far as it goes. The thought of taking the kids to visit him in a shopping centre and getting a photo of them sitting on his knee doesn't fill me with joy so we don't do it.

But this photo is pretty clever. Guessing it's photo-shopped rather than someone actually managing to set up that many dogs and to get them all to look in the same direction at the same time. Amusing nonetheless.

More Christmas from The Piano Guys

Watch for the spinning cello at around 2:50.

We caught up on our Advent calendar

We did a couple of blitz nights where we did four or five readings in one hit. Not ideal, but since most of our readings are just one or two verses, we got there.

Christmas music from The Piano Guys

Awesome stuff. Great film location too.

Christmas music for your enjoyment

Christmas and other stuff

Deb posted this on her blog. I think it's from a couple of years back, but it's still pretty cool, so I'm stealing her idea and posting it here as well.

Have had a few other things occupying my thinking space lately so I've been finding it hard to blog at the same time. Will enlighten you further a little bit later when I have some more time to spare.

On the good news front, I am still going okay on the chronological Bible reading plan. I've only missed a couple of days. I'm back in Genesis now, working my way through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at the moment. Lots of action going on there. Interesting to read.

Christmas silliness

The house across the street from ours has one of these in the front yard. The owners put it out yesterday and left it deflated on the ground all day, but at night it came to life with light and movement. I even saw the guy who lives there taking some video of it in action yesterday evening. When Santa hits the top of the see saw's movement range, he does this little extra tip up like he's about to fly head over heels into the reindeer's lap. It's funny to watch.

I'm not sure I like his taste in Christmas inflatables, but I'm sure it will provide plenty of entertainment for the small people here in the coming weeks.

Advent calendar fail

Two days in and we're already two days behind on our readings.

Although the felt one we are using for Rosie that adds a different bit to the nativity scene each day is on track. It's easy to find the five seconds that this requires.

Sigh. I thought I was doing well to have put the two calendars up on Thursday. I thought getting them up and visible early would be helpful with staying on track.

So it's three readings for us tomorrow...

It's that time of year again....

You know the one. Where everyone starts blogging about their Christmas crafty stuff and Advent calendars. All very inspiring, unless you're like me and the thought of doing crafty stuff (by myself or with the kids) makes me want to poke needles in my eyes.

I've stocked up on a few Advent calendar products and booklets over the past few years so this year we are just recycling stuff from last year and the couple of years before that. Meredith's got another good set of readings up on her blog. But what I'm doing is hardly worth blogging about.

So instead of blogging about Christmas stuff (I might get around to it when December actually arrives), I thought I would tell you about the DVD series I've been watching lately.

The Tudors. I haven't actually watched Series 1 yet, but I've gotten through 2, 3 and 4. Series 4 ends with Henry VIII dying, and they haven't made any further series after that.

It's pretty full on stuff. In Series 2 and 3, Henry's at the height of his physical powers and the quest for the male heir is all-consuming. So definitely not suitable for kids' viewing. The way he ruthlessly disposes of wives once he's had enough of them (or when they fail to produce male children, or when their previous indiscretions come to light) is a bit confronting. Plenty of other people get beheaded, burned at the stake or hung, drawn and quartered along the way as well.

In Series 4, Henry finally does something other than get married and try to have a son when he goes off to war. There are a couple of good battle episodes which came as something of a relief after all the sex and execution scenes. Then he suddenly ages really quickly (in the space of a couple of episodes) at the end of Series 4 and starts to go a bit mad, just as the  position of wife #6 Catherine Parr is starting to look a bit shaky (because she is a Reformer).

I don't know that all of what's in this series is necessarily strictly historically accurate. I suspect there's been a bit of dramatic licence used to spice things up a bit. Before I watched this, I knew what had happened to each of the wives and that was about it. If you don't like watching plenty of death and sex scenes, it's probably not the series for you (although you can do what I did when they started to get a bit much, and press the fast forward button). The Tudor period of history has always interested me though. I've always thought that the whole concept of a guy setting up his own church because he didn't like what the Pope was telling him to do is an interesting foundation for the Church of England to have come from, actually. So very selfish of Henry, but from these beginnings we now have the Anglican Church. I think we can safely say it's a bit more Christ-centred these days.

New music for Christmas

Caroline, an occasional commenter in here (it was lovely to hear from you Caroline!)  reminded me last week that a couple of years ago I was hunting for sheet music for the Wheeler and James Australian Christmas Carols. I didn't have any luck finding them back then. So when she mentioned them this time, I went on another internet search and musicroom came through with the goods.

It arrived today. I've been having a lovely time playing my way through Three Drovers, Carol of the Birds, Silver Stars are In the Sky, The North Wind and other old favourites. It's great to have them all together in one book.

Just one teensy criticism (that's not specific to this music book) is that it's not spiral bound. Spiral binding makes page turning heaps easier if you're in the middle of a complicated sequence of notes. And if a song is only two pages long, then it would be great if it could be on two facing pages instead of needing a page turn in the middle. I suppose now that I own it, I could photocopy a few pages to fix that problem.

But otherwise, I'm very happy. I don't know if any of the words of these carols would get through our church music team's criteria for appropriate songs to sing at our church Christmas carol night, but I really love these old Australian songs so I'm happy to potter around playing them and singing them with the family at home.

We're "reviving" the First Noel for Christmas Carols this year....

The old arrangement we've used in previous years was very ordinary to play. This version has a nice keyboard accompaniment which I am in the process of learning, but it is a bit more complicated, especially at the end as it builds up to the big finale. I noticed on this video that one of the band members was playing both keyboard and guitar. I'm glad I don't have to replicate that.

We're going to have it as an item by the lead singers (I think) rather than having the whole congregation singing it. Any mistakes I make are going to be much more obvious than they would be if everyone was singing. Fortunately I have another few weeks to get it sorted out.

Christmas elf (not me) has been busy tonight...

....assembling this. He didn't get time to put together the top section, due to a dramatic underestimation of the amount of time taken to assemble Ikea furniture from flat pack to completion.

But it's after midnight now, so time for bed. The top will have to wait until tomorrow night. Or maybe until Boxing Day.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas

Have a wonderful day celebrating the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ with family and friends.

Christmas Eve family fun

Some shots from today's festivities. A lovely lunch followed by an afternoon of mass kite flying in the park overlooking Pumicestone Passage. The kites were gifts to all the nieces and nephews from their aunty.

Hard to capture all five kites in a single photo though...

Family Christmas dinner menu

Each year for Christmas, we have a special dinner for our family. Normally this happens on Christmas Eve, but because Christmas falls on a weekend this year and we are eating with Chris' extended family tomorrow, tonight's the night for our family meal.

Here's what we are having this year:

Prawn, avocado and mango with seafood sauce. This was actually going to be little pikelets with crab salad on top, but lack of availability of buttermilk, Lebanese cucumber and fresh crab meat in the supermarket meant we had to scrap that plan at the last minute. This is an old favourite recipe that Chris invented so he gets the unenvied job of peeling the prawns.

Apple cider glazed ham with warm roast potato salad and green been and cranberry salad. Glaze is already made and ready to go. Potatoes are partially cooked ready for roasting. Beans will take five minutes later on.

And for dessert, frozen chocolate cherry mousse. I made this yesterday and when I checked the freezer earlier I think it was frozen. Hard to tell when it's covered with baking paper, glad wrap and inside a loaf tin. When it comes time to turn it out, I guess we'll know if it's okay. All I have to do then is decorate the top with cherries and chocolate curls. Currently googling to find out how to make chocolate curls because I haven't done that before.

After that it will be time to go for a drive to check out some Christmas lights around the neighbourhood.

Hope all of you enjoy your Christmas dinners too!

Advent calendar 2011

This morning I found this in Pillow Talk while I was looking for something else. It wasn't very cheap, but it's perfect for a disorganised Advent calendar maker like me.*

I have just printed off some Advent Bible readings that I found online here.

Now I just need to cut out all the bits of paper and put them into the stockings, think of a few Christmassy activities to add for some of the days, throw a few lollies into some of the other little stockings, and it's finished. For now, it's ready to go with the first reading tonight.

How's that for last minute?

* I convinced my husband to buy it by saying it could be re-used in the future....

Merry Christmas to all

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas! Enjoy celebrating the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

"Behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord." (Luke 2:10-11, ESV).

May His blessings be yours this Christmas.

Lego Nativity Scene

Aidan and Liam made this today for Cathy's Lego Nativity Scene competition. I suggested they do it/made them do it while I was cooking for our family Christmas Eve dinner tonight.

They had a few challenges. Making the star was tricky. The large arms/wings sticking out on either side of it belong to an angel. We don't own any Lego women, so Mary is being played by a builder. One of the shepherds has a leg missing, but that is cleverly hidden by the sheep positioned in front of him.

It was good fun once they finally got started. Unfortunately prior to them starting, I had to do the first two things on Simone's top 5 list of what to do with overexcited kids at Christmas.

Sigh.

Christmas Eve Muppets

An early Muppets since I may not be back in here on Monday.

Merry Christmas to my readers. Thanks for your support this year!