I remember the first Christmas tree Mr T and I had.
It was for the Christmas of 1989. We’d been together for about 6 months and he’d moved in – or rather, stopped going home. We decorated an indoor “happy” plant with tinsel and put pressies around the pot. It was special.
When we moved into our own house just before Christmas the following year, we invested $20 in a 2nd hand tree and started collecting decorations. The Christmas I was pregnant with Ms T we started the tradition of buying a new ornament each year – I still remember buying this gorgeous glass ball from DJs in the city. The following year she chose her first ornament – pointing to this gold bear from her pram.
Over the years she’s chosen the cupcake Santa, the Surfing Santa, the parachuting Santa and a variety of bells and baubles. Her favourite is still the Ted Baker very glam ball we bought in Melbourne in 2014.
There are the ornaments that remind us of people and places. The pandas I brought home from Hong Kong when I was there doing a relocation for work (2008), the pottery bird from the handmade markets in Perth when I was there doing another relocation for work (2009), and the pohutukawa my friend brought over from NZ. Whenever I hang that – and another I’ve bought since – I think of her and my “adopted” country.
In 2015 we brought 2 back from London: a suitcase with a map that was a reminder of the major project Miss T had done for the HSC that year and a cocker spaniel that we splashed out on in Liberty. It’s a posh cocker spaniel and looks nothing like Kali, Adventure Spaniel, but a spaniel it is. This year we brought back a rolling pin and gingerbread recipe from the Christmas shop in Brugge.
In 2017 we went for a dolphin and sea turtle to remind us that we’d moved to Queensland. The theme was continued this year with a jellyfish and seahorse. We also threw financial caution to the wind this year and blew nearly $20 on the Villeroy & Boch angel in the top pic. The tinsel and the beads have all come from discount stores. At Christmas more definitely is more.
The year Kali, Adventure Spaniel, was still quite puppyish, we hung bells on the bottom row so we’d know when she’d gone under the tree to steal presents. She never chewed anything, just carried them away – one by one – to stockpile them in her favourite hiding spot.
We upgraded the original $20 fake tree some years ago with another fake tree, and decorating it on the first Sunday in December has become one of the traditions we’ve created for our little family. We pop the cork on a bottle of bubbly, prepare platters of nibbly bits (that we serve on ceramic trays that Miss T has painted over the years), and load the Christmas music playlist onto the phone – making sure that there are at least four copies of each of my favourite songs, and absolutely none of the ones I dislike the most…naturally I have a list.
Then we put the tree up. Hubby and Ms T usually have at least one argument about how she doesn’t read his mind and know exactly what ornament he wants her to pass next. Ms T usually has at least one comment about how I’ll never manage to hit the high notes on Mariah’s version of All I Want For Christmas and how I don’t need to do the boob wobble every time I hear the jingly bit at the start. We’ll argue about which power cord is the one that shorts the rest of the house and how hubby thought we were going to label it as such last year. After the tree has been put up Ms T and I take our music and glasses of Baileys on ice into the TV room and sit on the floor and wrap presents.
I love looking at the Instagram pictures of beautifully coordinated trees and admit to a sort of envy – but I don’t really have the focus required to remain envious for long. Besides, our tree and its chaotic mix of mismatching themes and colours – with a memory in every single last bauble – suits us perfectly.
What about you? Are you more mix or more match when it comes to Christmas trees?
It’s Lovin’ Life Linky time…
It’s Thursday, so it’s time to look for our happy and share it about a bit. The Lovin’ Life Linky is brought to you by Team Lovin’ Life: Deep Fried Fruit, Debbish, Write of the Middle, and, of course, me.
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Posted on November 18, 2018 by Jo
What I’m proud of…
Happy Ever After is out now and available on Amazon. Hubby and I had a few drinks last night to celebrate. If I can get my act into gear it will also be available on print in a few weeks too.
What’s making me smile…
The song of the butcher birds – at both our house and along the beach walk. Although they may look similar to a magpie, their song is more of a choral than a warble – although that probably makes very little sense.
Dumplings…
There’s very little about Sydney that I miss, but dumplings are one of them – good dumplings, that is. I can get so-so dumplings but haven’t had great dumplings. Apparently, there’s a Chinese up at Sunshine Beach that is really good, but it’s priced accordingly and I firmly believe that dumplings are food for the people…so to speak. Having said that, I will try them sometime.
Anyways, I had good dumplings this week at Tang Dynasty in Mooloolaba, at New Shanghai in Brisbane City and King of Kings in Fortitude Valley. That should tide me over for at least a month or so.
Now to find good Chinese BBQ…
What I read…
Christmas at Claridges – which had nothing to do with either Christmas or Claridges, despite what the cover and the title might have implied. Aside from a couple of pages in the final chapter and a couple of pages earlier – that are actually in Claridges – the book is set mostly in Portobello and Portofino. As for Christmas? Again, just a single scene right at the end. And yes, this really did annoy me even though I enjoyed the read itself.
I suspect that one of her other books, Christmas at Tiffanys, also has little to do with Christmas or Tiffanys – there’s nothing about either in the back-cover blurb.
I also requested an advance copy for review (ARC) of Sulari Gentill’s latest Rowland Sinclair mystery, All The Tears In China. I’d been looking forward to this one from Batlow-based Gentill and it absolutely didn’t disappoint.
My review is up on Goodreads.
What I wrote…
Although I’ve been slack and haven’t been updating my word totals on the official nanowimo page, I’m currently at 33,206 words into my new manuscript It’s In The Stars. I’m also beginning to get an idea of where the story is going – and, as tends to be the case with me – where it’s going is somewhere different to where I thouh that it would go.
What I blogged…
I deliberated for quite a while this week about the direction I was going with the blogs and have done some segregation.
Going forward:
I hope that you join me on whichever of these sites is of interest to you.
I also posted something about Queenstown and the locations that inspired the scenes in Happy Ever After.
Where I weekended…
Brisbane. Yep, just an hour or so down the road.
I’ll be in Sydney in the first week of December so all the Christmas shopping for the family needs to be done before I go. We don’t have a David Jones on the coast and I wanted also to check out Riverside Markets, and hubby wanted to wander around the discount outlets at DFO (my idea of absolute hell) so Brissie it was. More on what we did and where we walked later in the week.
And that, my friends, was my week…how was yours?
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