Good evening beautiful souls,
I’ve had a lovely couple of days off celebrating Christmas with friends and family. Being both German and Irish my Christmas traditions are a mixed bag and I love it. Here’s what I got up to.
I have always celebrated Christmas on Christmas eve – that’s the German tradition and I love it! This is the first year I have my own place and am not just home from uni for the holidays, so it was the first year I didn’t have a family breakfast on Christmas eve with my parents and sister. Instead I made a yummy brunch for Jessica and myself and we had a relaxing morning watching Santa Claus, drinking coffee and enjoying a cheeky sausage on avocado & egg toast.
After a lazy morning I packed all my things up to take to my parents later that day and got ready. I enjoyed the routine of glaming up and putting a full face of makeup on whilst listening to Christmas songs and feeling more festive with every song I sang along to. I decided to pair my LBD with a wine coloured polo neck as my parents house tends to be on the cold side compared to mine and then went for dangly earrings as a statement piece and dark lips to match the polo.
Just after 2pm my mum and sister picked me up and we went into Durham to go to the 3pm 9 lessons and carols service at the Cathedral. We didn’t stay for the full thing however as sadly being right at the back we could hardly hear and had to stand; however we did enjoy belting out some descants to our favourite carols before we left. As we’d left a bit earlier we decided to grab a coffee before heading home to give my dad a bit more time to rest because he wasn’t feeling great. We popped into Flat White in Durham and treated ourselves to some nice peanut butter bar thing too.
Finally it was time to head home and for me to see our Christmas tree for the first time!! I love our Christmas tree; we always get a real one and the pine just smells wonderful. After adding my presents to the pile under the tree I finished painting my nails (as I’d totally mis-planned my time getting ready earlier) and then we all sat down together for our Christmas Eve dinner. It was time for another first this year as we changed up our family traditional meal for some salmon with rice and salad. It was very tasty but I have to say I missed our usual Christmas eve meal.
After dinner we read the Christmas Story and sang some carols together in both English and German before sitting around the tree to open all our presents. We always take it in turns to open gifts so everyone sees what the other received and also so the process of opening gifts lasts as long as possible. About half way through we usually pause to make some tea and enjoy some Lebkuchen and Stollen some of our favourite German Christmas goodies. I’ll do a what I got for Christmas post soon, but for now I’ll just share my best present with you. I got a cello on loan!!! I haven’t played the cello in about 6 years as I’ve never owned my own instrument so when I stopped lessons after 9 years I had to return the cello to the music school. I’ve been itching to have another go at the cello for years now and so to finally be able to do this was the best present I could ask for – and it was a complete surprise! What made me even happier was that I remembered a lot more than I thought I had!
Eventually we were all tire and crept to bed, but not before filling each others stockings. You see with also being British we still get stockings and Santa on Christmas Day, even though Christmas eve is our main celebration. The last few years we started a new tradition where everyone in the family was responsible for one persons stocking, this year I had my mum. So the next morning I got everyone out of bed at around 9am – no more 6am wakeup calls like when I was younger, although I ma still always the first one up who gathers everyone together so that we can open our stockings together. Once opened we made breakfast and enjoyed a lazy morning. In the afternoon we went to pick up Jessica who was joining us for Christmas dinner and some games. It was a lovely afternoon which we ended with snuggling up to watch the Call The Midwives Christmas special before my sister drove Jessica and myself home.
On Boxing Day it was our turn to host and we invited my family over and my good friend Anna from work for a yummy spread, cocktails and games evening. We got stuck into Cluedo and Settlers which were both great fun!
So all in all it’s been a lovely couple of days relaxing and enjoying each others company with good food, drinks and lot’s of laughter. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!
Love Carina xo
simplycarinaxo.co.uk 