Let’s Keep The Momentum Going ~ Another Meme (Because I’m Too Tired To Think Creatively)

I am totally stealing this from an email sent to me by my friend Kellie.  Kellie is a newlywed, has no children and does not blog (I know! The horror!) so clearly, she has all the time in the world to undertake such foolishness (hiya Sweets!).

Welcome to the Christmas edition of getting to know your friends.

Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Wrapping paper.  During one of my oft-begun but never finished crafting surges I was determined to switch the entire family to fabric gift bags, lovingly hand stitched (of course) by me, but the thought of sewing so many straight seams made me want to pluck out my eyelashes one by one - and so it remains a far off dream.

Real tree or Artificial?
Artificial.  And it took me many years to get that.  I distinctly remember having to beg and cajole Talented Hubby to upgrade from our 2 foot table top tree - you know the sort, it comes complete with the decorations already hung and is bought at the grocery store!  We used that sad little thing for several years until my obvious charm won him over and we upgraded to a 6 footer.  I fondly remember the real pines of my childhood - although my mother was caught muttering about pine needles and clutching the vacuum cleaner in a death grip more than once.  The smell though! It just screams Christmas.  I miss that.

When do you put up the tree?
In our house, we’re under strict conditions not to drag the box out until December 4.  The reason? Talented Hubby’s birthday is the 3rd and the poor mite hates the trauma of sharing December enough as it is.  The man prefers to believe the world is just getting really excited about him turning another year older.  Me? I’d love a December birthday.  But then, I am a Christmas nut, so…

When do you take the tree down?
Well, officially after New Year’s Day.  We usually manage to procrastinate until at least the middle of the month, if not later though.

Do you like eggnog?
I’ve never had it.  Milk and eggs?  Does it actually have eggs in it?

Favorite gift received as a child?
Easy - my Cabbage Patch Kid (the original run - ahem).  Her name was Beatrice something-or-other but I called her Cabbie because I was oh-so-sophisticated.  I remember pitying my friend who had a CPK called Tiffany.  I much preferred Stephanie and couldn’t imagine having to put up with Tiffany.  Like I said, sophisticated, LOL.

Hardest person to buy for?
Talented Hubby, 100%.  He’s a careful spender, so his idea of good gifts pretty much boil down to practical, useful things, and with rare exceptions, he will generally talk himself out of even those.  So when a gift-giving occasion rolls around, he has a hard time giving anyone a list of what he’d like, because in the back of his mind, he’s calculating whether it’s worth spending the money.  The only ‘hobby’ he’s into is photography, but I know nothing at all about that so would never attempt to buy him any equipment on my own.  He has ideas about features he likes and brands and whatnot and I am utterly clueless, so what usually happens is I’ll give him ‘mad money’.  He’s HORRIBLE about spending it though.  He’s got several hundred dollars worth of mad money socked away on a spreadsheet and won’t spend it!  Then there’s me, who has a running list of ‘wants’ and when I get a little extra, I’ve already ordered from Amazon before 9am on my birthday/Mother’s Day or something, LOL.

Easiest person to buy for?
Probably the kids, collectively, because they’ve usually squawked about this or that toy, puzzle or game countless times by the time the shopping season rolls around.  That does not mean they get it!  But it’s fairly clear what their top three gifts would be.  This year, we’ve scaled it right back and are pooling most of the money we would have spent on them individually, and putting it toward the complete Guitar Hero band set.  EXPENSIVE.  But it’s something the whole family will get loads of use out of, compared to individual toys that lose interest within the month.

Do you have a nativity scene?
Nope, though I think it would be cool to have one:)  Willow Creek does a really lovely, simplistic nativity that’s about on my level.  I’m much more inclined toward neutrals and earth tones rather than elaborate, colourful plastic things.

Mail or email Christmas cards?
Where’s the third option for ignoring them altogether? LOL.  Every year I say I’m going to do it and every year I don’t.  The kids all give a card to every one of their classmates - over 60 kids in total - so I reckon I’ve licked enough envelopes in my time!

Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
A voucher to a music store when I was about 8 years old.  Sounds pretty good on the surface but it was for a store in an entirely different state and that was back in the day before the Internet so you had to actually be physically present to redeem it.  Special mention also goes to a present Master J received once.  One of his uncles gave him a scuba mask and snorkel set.  He was TWO.

Favorite Christmas Movie?
Ooooh - it’s a three way tie between Love Actually, The Polar Express (we just watched that one last night - love it) and Miracle on 34th Street (the newest one).  I am such a sap for holiday movies though.

When do you start shopping for Christmas?
Ordinarily I’m starting to think about it not long after my birthday on October 3rd.  If I’m particularly on the ball I’ll have bought a few things for the gift drawer in the mid-year sales or at other places as they’ve jumped out at me for particular people (you know how you sometimes find that perfect present in the weirdest of places? In like March or something?).  This year, we’ve pared right back on the gifts.  I’ve done no really specific shopping yet, except for the purchase of Guitar Hero a couple of weeks ago when it was on sale.  There are a few reasons for this.  We’re travelling over the holiday season and after one year where we trudged ALL the presents with us to our destination, we worked out we were stupid and would never do that again.  We’re also going away for longer than usual and need the car space for suitcases.  And lastly, our focus this year has been on the ‘couple of bigger gifts, not so much ’small stuff’ approach and neither of our two big ticket items (Guitar Hero and a new puppy) travel particularly well.  We will have one medium gift and possibly one small one for each of the kids, as well as gifts for TH’s parents and brother, to take with us, and we’ll do the whole stockings bit, but no masses of individually wrapped things like we’ve done in the past.  It has actually been quite freeing.

Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Um…the snorkel set, LOL.  And a duplicate milkshake maker and Christmas crafts book because we already had the same ones.

Favorite thing about Christmas?
Being with family, and continuing our traditions.  A lot has changed over the years but there are still some things I’ve kept from my own childhood - my parents were big Christmas fans - which I’ve tried to keep going with my family.  Things like what we serve for the big meal, to the brand of after dinner mint we have when we’re all stuffed and sick in the evening, LOL.  A whole raft of stuff.  Talented Hubby might not share my uber-enthusiasm but allows me to go a little crazy and obsessed and for that, I adore him!

Lights on the tree?
Gosh, I don’t know.  I love the look of lights but stringing them seems like such a hassle.  We’ve used the same couple of 20 bulb strings for years and years so we haven’t got an elaborate set up or anything but I guess we do throw them on as best we can for the atmosphere.  We only turn them on every now and then though.

Favorite Christmas song?
This is totally parental influence from when I was a child at home, but I love all the old time Christmas classics.  Anything by Nat King Cole - Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire is a fave - Frosty the Snowman, Silver Bells, White Christmas, all that stuff.  Plus the usual Carols.  TH could care less about music at Christmas and likens the whole thing to fingernails on a blackboard.  Bah humbug to him!

Travel at Christmas or stay home?
I can’t remember the last time I had a Christmas at home.  I actually kind of miss it.  We’ve been in this house - our first non-rental - for three and a half years now, so this will be our fourth Christmas, and we’ve never hosted.  In the early years, work commitments kept TH forcibly near home - every Christmas for the first 6 or 7 years I knew him, he had to work on the day - but now that he has progressed (new job, new working arrangement) we’ve had a run of about 4 or 5 years where he’s had enough time off to make travel worthwhile.  As I’m big on family at Christmas, I prefer to be with others and a ‘just us’ celebration, while with it’s merits, doesn’t sound, I don’t know - as Christmassey to me somehow.  So we travel.

Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer’s?
Um, not off the top off my head…I get about ¾.

Angel on the tree top or a star?
Star.  But I must say, we’re due for an upgrade - we have a gold star and a red star and I’m sick of looking at the both of them!

Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
Opening presents on Christmas Eve is totally banned.  Totally.  No exceptions.  The deal is, the kids can wake us from, say, 6am and we’ll open the stockings right away, but then we force them to wait until after breakfast for the good stuff.  My parents did it that way - mmm, bacon and eggs with orange juice - so we do it that way :)

Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
The crowds, which are everywhere I am and never where I’m not.  And witnessing over-spending by people who can least afford to put things on credit.  That makes me sad.

Favorite ornament theme or color?
I’m a two-tone girl.  I don’t so much like green though - hanging green on a green tree just doesn’t sit right with me somehow.  I love purple/silver or blue/silver but as we’re still using the same old set of ornaments from the dark age we have red and gold.  I think this year I’ll allocate some cash to the after Christmas sales and restock.  Oh, and we buy a new clay-dough ornament for the kids each year and write their names and the year on the back - Moo has angels, J has Santas and Boof has Christmas trees/snowmen.  One day when they leave home they’ll have a nice little collection to start off their own trees :)

Favorite Thing for Christmas dinner?
We start eating around 11:00 and pretty much go through till 7:00, on and off.  There are no definitive ‘meals’ on the day.  Just one big smorgasboard, LOL.  And I’ll let you in on a little secret - we don’t serve turkey.  Wanna know why?  Because it has always confounded me to see such ridiculously overpriced poultry for the holiday season when, ordinarily, Australians aren’t that big on turkey the rest of the year.  We can get like ginormous turkey drumsticks, or perhaps some mince (ground turkey) in most major supermarkets year-round, but down here we don’t even have Thanksgiving, so Christmas has the turkey monopoly and boy, does it get exploited.  For the price of one turkey big enough to feed the 10-12 people MIL usually hosts each year, with leftovers, she could buy three or four chickens.  And as she also serves ham and generally lamb as well, spending a bajillion bucks on a turkey that pretty much tastes like chicken anyway, has never made any sense to me at all.  Even when I hosted at home, I always did chicken due to economics.  It’s the side dishes that make the meal anyway - we MUST have cauliflower and white sauce, pumpkin, roast potatoes, corn on the cob, beans, carrots, stuffing, gravy…you get the idea.  OH, and MIL’s awesome Raspberry Malteser Icecream Desert.  I am not much for traditional pudding either.

What do you want for Christmas this year?
I am so lame.  I want laundry baskets and a new vacuum cleaner.  But technically I already got my Christmas present along with my birthday present in October, as we spent a bit more than we’d originally budgeted for my new camera.  I’m cool with that.  I love my camera :)

Snow Christmas morning?
I just count it a blessing if the temp drops below thirty!  That’s celcius folks.  Something like mid-eighties F.  We live no where NEAR the snowfields in Australia and the whole ‘Christmas in summer’ thing kind of nixes the whole snow idea anyway, LOL.

Thanks Kel!  As for the rest of you, if you want to use this as a meme, feel free to steal :)