all over for another year
I love Christmas for many reasons. Somehow this year I missed a few of the traditions–no mince pies and no Christmas Pudding and I just couldn’t get into shopping for presents although I did make my annual Christmas Eve trip to the mall for a last minute gift for my brother-in-law. Maybe it was because I worked right until the last day or I’m just getting too old to do Christmas the same way yet again.
One thing that hasn’t changed is making photographs around Christmas. This year I had an idea that I wanted to try out but I didn’t have a chance to work on it prior to the Big Day but it will keep for next year I think. I did however get an idea when I was at the ballet a couple of weeks ago. When the curtain closed and the only thing left on stage was the nutcracker, I thought about including my own nutcracker in our Christmas festivities. Inspired by the traveling gnome, I brought my nutcracker over to my sister’s house and we had loads of fun photographing the little guy. In my mind, I imagined how he was dreaming of coming to life simply to enjoy the amazing dinner my sister prepared for the family.
Every time we sit down to a turkey dinner, my brother-in-law declares: “This is THE best turkey ever!”. We laugh at him because it’s usually the same turkey, deconstructed, prepared a couple of days ahead and soaked in brine, then cooked quickly in a convection oven. This year though I have to agree with him. It really was the best turkey EVER. My sister outdid herself making everything from scratch, even the stuffing and cranberry sauce. Well everything except the organic pie; that we always get from Aphrodite’s Cafe. I am looking forward to more turkey the rest of this week! Here are a few more pictures from our Christmas Day. Enjoy 
Love the nutcracker soldier. A sweet addition to your Christmas festivities. It’s been a while since we had turkey on Christmas day but settled for our new traditional rib of beef. Like the turkey though we’ll be eating it for days to come. Hope the rest of the festive season is as fun and full of great eating.
I’m thinking next year I might try to find a larger nutcracker
A traditional rib of beef is probably what we do for New Year’s Eve here in North America which makes me wonder, what do you do for NYE in NZ?
I’m not a great fan of NYE but we always make a nice dinner to celebrate. Die hard kiwis can be found bending over their barbies at a beach side camp or their family bach. Fish seems to be a big thing for seeing in the NY. Christmas fare for kiwis is usually ham, salmon or lamb. For NYE we cooked lamb in our barbeque so in a pick and mix kind of way feel we were living the kiwi life
I was wondering if you celebrated with a BBQ as that’s what we in Southern Africa used to do. Our family were real carnivores serving everything from chicken, beef, lamb, sausages (boerwors). Funny though we never had fish