As sad as I am that we couldn't be with family this year, I have to admit that I do love a cosy Christmas at home, just us four with no packing or travelling. It's how my Christmases always were when I grew up, we had our special traditions like opening stockings on Mum & Dad's bed then breakfast and getting all dressed up before presents from under the tree were opened. So Tier 4 - we're making the most of it!
I set up a fairly minimal (for me) Christmas breakfast table using some of the trees from my "forest" I made last week, all ready to surprise the kids in the morning with their cute new Santa glasses and our old Santa mugs for the VAT of coffee I anticipated we'd need, how right I was!
Christmas Eve was a late one as Kalyan was more excited that he's ever been in his life! We thought he'd finally fallen asleep but he was awake again at 10:30pm (thankfully before Santa had been!) so we had to stay up pretty late before risking eating Santa's mince pie and filling stockings. I then realised I had to charge my camera batteries and clear my memory cards/backup photos before the morning so I went to bed well after midnight.
Of course, despite his late night, he was then up way before dawn at 5:30am!
After the fun of stockings in bed, we managed to drag ourselves downstairs for breakfast which luckily I'd prepared the night before so we just had to bung it in the oven! It's the first time I've made this particular Tear & Share Pastry Christmas Tree and it was DELICIOUS! The kids loved the surprise decorated table and the excitement continued after the got dressed and got to open the giant present Santa had left by the tree...
For our starter (which ended up just being lunch), I'd made a smoked salmon terrine which was delicious, even Kalyan asked for more! I'd got them these cute little "wine" glasses in a local charity shop with a gorgeous snowflake design on and bought a rhubarb & grape fizz for them as a treat while we had our Champagne, except Kalyan hated the fizziness, lol.
After lunch Priya and I fully dressed up the table as I'd been planning for about a month with some lovely new bits & pieces I'll share details of in another post!
We had our beef wellington dinner around 5pm and we all went to bed pretty early! I was asleep by 8pm after snuggling with the kids at their bedtime!!
Boxing day was a much more relaxed day with no cooking (except boiling a ham in cider for tea) and lots of lounging around in our PJs playing and watching films - it was perfect after such a tiring lead up to Christmas!
The new Christmas ring toss game was a big hit!
We didn't leave the house again until the afternoon of the 27th when the sun shone and we had a lovely walk down by the seaside at Eastbourne Pier.
How was your Christmas? Was it what you planned or are you usually surrounded by friends and family? Did you enjoy a lazy peaceful few days like us?