post christmas round-up 2023

Rain on Christmas? Clouds and cold weather?

Yeah... "Adelaide recorded its coldest Christmas Day since 2006 (17.9 degrees recorded at the Kent Town observation site)". Although I do love how difficult it is to find any reliable reporting on the temperature at Christmas, other than the Bureau of Meteorology, because media outlets are always screaming about it being the hottest, coldest, wettest, cloudiest, humidest, blah di blah di blah Christmas since [insert random year].

But otherwise, it was actually a pretty good day overall. I both didn't take a lot of photos, and the photos I did take weren't what we would consider my best work, so I did find this great retro pin-up Caducado piece that can serve in place of the usual Christmas tree photo (also, we've kind of stopped doing full on Christmas tree-ness, but Ma does have little tiny trees that she can take down without assistance come January.

I didn't do anything particular festive last night... I made pizza, which fulfilled my Christmas Eve Pizza requirements, packed up some stuff that I was taking to Ma's place but that was about it.

This morning I did my morning walk. And it was odd, because I only started doing this again in January (and mentioned it briefly at the start of February), so it was interesting doing the Christmas Morning Walk, which I haven't done since the old days of North Adelaide. There are always a couple of folks out and about, although I did see more folks out walking their dogs (we get a lot of that in Norwood) when I was driving to Ma's.

Anyway, I got back, got ready and, as I said, headed down the road and got to Ma's shortly after 9.

Note to self: If we buy croissants a day early, check if they're in those bags that are designed to not make bread products go soft. Because that's great for certain things, but not for croissants. But the insides were mostly good.

So, yeah, our usual croissant breakfast. After I pre-breakfasted on some of the ham hearts Ma was literally pulling out of the oven when I got there.

The weird thing is, because we do basically the same thing every year, and, honestly, not much of anything really happens, I always end up not really remembering the order in which we did anything.

I think we did presents next.

So, we have...

• Yarn in 7 colours (you know, basically a jewel-tone rainbow) plus black for my 2024 Hexagon Granny Square Cardigan project (there's also more black yarn not shown)
  
• Dice Advent Calendar (from Mr and Mrs)
• Haighs Milk Chocolate Baubles (from Mr and Mrs)
• The 99% Invisible City book (from Fluffy)
• Pink and Orange Skull Dice (from Fluffy)
• Saga, Volume 11
• Lego + Disney 100 Wicked Queen and Robin Hood minifigs
  
• Bundaberg Christmas Spiced Ginger Beer
• Chocolate Crackle Candle
• Black Body Pillowcase
• Mossimo Mens Canvas Slip-On Shoes (not shown... I forgot to put them in shot)

See what I mean... I forgot to put shoes in the shot... and I only realised afterwards that I had put the Dice Advent Calendar down upside down.

I was also pleased with my Lego + Disney minifigs... especially given that they were the last two in the box when we bought them. Would it have been perfect if I'd gotten Cruella, Stitch or Baymax? Yes, but at least I got my Wicked Queen.

I'd also brought my laptop up to Ma's, so at a certain point I hooked it up to Ma's TV (which she can't do with her laptop because it's a little old and crusty) and just stuck some Christmas Lofi on while we did other things.

There was a hiccup when we went out to light the Webber. Well, more so when we went out to check on it after lighting it. Because of the wind, it wasn't catching the way it needed to and the coals weren't heating up like they needed to.

So, we basically gave up on that, came inside and cranked up the oven. Thankfully it was, as previously discussed, the coldest Christmas Day in 17 years, so that wasn't really an issue.

It was also slightly odd... because we only do this whole thing once a year, it's kind of easier to track the changes to our routine... and this year, I ended up doing a lot of the cooking and organising and prepping and whatnot. Which let Ma relax. In previous years we've mostly been sharing it all, but I just got on with it.

And for the most part, shoving it all in the oven worked out. It was a little more crowded, and I probably didn't need to microwave the potatoes first since they were in the oven the whole time (they were fine, just a little too crispy).

While things were cooking, I put on the Scrooge musical that I'd watched last year, because it's colour and movement and takes up time and is still pretty good. It also meant that I could walk away from it to do Christmas Lunch prep and not actually be missing anything.

I did swap back to Christmas Lofi Beats when we were eating dinner though.

And, like I said, other than slightly overly crispy potatoes, it was pretty well done. I mean, it isn't going to the top of the list of our Christmas Salads, but it was tasty.

It also really doesn't matter how early we try to get organised or how early we intend to have Christmas Lunch... it always ends up being about 2:30.

Then we finished lunch, we finished Scrooge and then tidied up from lunch. And I threw together some Eton Mess, as we usually do.

We continued in the Christmas Carol vein with A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong (also on YouTube), which is always fun.

Then we packed up my stuff and the leftover food I was taking home and I toddled off home... and it rained most of the way home. And by rain, it wasn't exactly bucketing down.

So... that's it for Christmas 2023.