A Very Aussie Christmas

I've been very annoyed this last week.  All the blogs I follow haven't been updated regularly - and many not at all - and it's been bugging me.  I've been waiting to read people's Christmas posts, and nobody's posted.

And then I realised, nor have I.  So at the risk of a pot-kettle-black situation, I thought I'd recap Christmas for you guys.

One of the best moments was probably decorating the Melted Snowmen Cookies.  I got this idea about 3 months ago from an article on Facebook and immediately fell in love.  I made up a batch of sugar cookie dough and (with difficulty) rolled out a bunch of cookies.  The day that I made them was ridiculously hot, and I guess I didn't have the A/C on early enough.  Despite following the recipe's instruction to leave the dough in the fridge for at least an hour before rolling, every time I got dough out of the fridge to roll, it started melting within seconds.  So that was fun!

That evening, Kurt and I spent a couple of hours decorating them, and it was lots of fun.  It was really nice doing a project together, and although fiddly, it was definitely rewarding.  Here is the finished product:

The morning of the 24th, we went for breakfast with Kurt's Grandma.  Every year, in Kurt's family, they have breakfast on Christmas Eve at McDonalds (affectionately known as "Macca's" in Australia).  This year, Kurt's Grandma wasn't well enough to take a trip out of the home for breakfast, so we brought Macca's to her.  It was a really nice morning and don't they look cute together?

That night, I drove up to Bribie to stay at the in-laws, and Kurt stayed back to operate a night shift.  He arrived on Christmas morning at about 6, and we then opened presents.  Which of course, knowing how I feel about presents, was great :) 

One of the best:

Christmas lunch didn't take too much preparation as most of the meat had been cooked the day before, and we also cut up all of the vegetables etc. then too.  I think there were fourteen or fifteen of us in the end.  Lily and Kurt's parents' dogs, Odo and Dax, got their very own Christmas lunch of a big meaty bone each.  Lily's bone was almost as big as her...

And my Christmas pudding (my Grandma's recipe!) was a resounding success:

That evening, feeling like I hadn't stopped eating all day, I drove back home and Kurt stayed back at his parents', as I had an early shift on Boxing Day.  It was very strange coming home and sitting in the house alone (even Lily still being on Bribie)... I felt like Christmas had come and gone so very fast.

It's now 2 Jan, and we still have the tree up.  Kurt wants to take it down, but I don't.  We watched an episode of QI before Christmas where Stephen Fry said that the tree had to stay up until 6 Jan (or the night of the 5th, anyway) and I'm determined that it will stay until then!  And then... well I guess I'll have to wait another 11-ish months until I can put it back up again.