Anything Planned For This Year Yet?

[JOHNOR]

does anyone have anything planned for this year yet?

my diary is full already!

i am a drama teacher so on saturday 8th december i will be putting on a christmas show for all the parents of the children i teach, after this my young cousin (who is like my shadow) and i will drive to the shops, buy 2 big tubs of ben and jerrys and two packs of popcorn and have a christmas film night.

on saturday december 15th i am hosting my annual christmas party for all the kids in my family, this year it is fancy dress and the children have to turn up as santa or an elf or a snowman, or anything christmassy! i do a buffet full of sandwiches, sausage rolls, tuna pasta, chicken wings, voul au vants, ribs, spring rolls, crisps, dips, chocolates and lots of drink. we play pass the parcel and listen to christmas songs!

on xmas eve i plan to go to my mums and take a bottle or two of champagne and get merry with some family, in the evening i will take a nice chinese takeaway home and spend the evening watching xmas tv with my boyfriend.

xmas day will be the same as always, i will get up at 7:30am, wake my boyfriend up and i will have a glass of bucks fizz and a box of chocolates for my breakfast, we will open eachothers gifts and then start to get dressed at about 8:30am. i will drive him to his mums at 10am and i will then i will go to my mums and meet my mum and family there. we will all go to the pub at 11:30am and stayuntil 3pm. i will then meet my dad and some of his family for christmas lunch and a few bottles of champagne. christmas evening is spent at my boyfriends parents having drinks with his family.

boxing day will be the same as always, get up and nurse my hangover for an hour or two! then get dressed, meet my mum and all the family at our local pub, have a few drinks and then go to gthe carvery for xmas lunch. after the carvery it's back to the pub all night singing xmas songs!

sorry for the long post, i just wanted to share! :celebrate:

[Sunshine73]

Wow, you do have a full diary!

My Christmas season hasn't gotten nearly that full of plans just yet. So far it's just Christmas Eve with the in-laws and Christmas Day with my family...as usual. We'll probably try to take in a performance of the Nutcracker at some point and we've been talking about taking a small weekend trip to Chicago to enjoy the city at Christmas time but nothing concrete planned as of yet.

[JOHNOR]

well you had better get planning, only 151 days to go, lol!

[Billy Battles]

Nothing in particular, however I do plan on enjoying the Christmas season

[JayIsh]

The only plans we have so far is to have our annual Christmas open house, probably on December 1, and the other plan, the more important one is to buy so many lights that people make a point of driving by our house to see them...One of those Clark W. Griswold type spreads...And this was my wife's idea!!!

jay

[Jeff Westover]

I expect it to be packed as usual -- tracking Santa starting on Thanksgiving, we have a Christmas service project over at the local retirement center (this year we're doing memory books with them), Christmas phantoming happens the 1st week of December, the neighborhood Christmas party is our responsibility this year (300+ people plus Santa), somewhere around the 15th is our Christmas night in the city for light tours and the concert with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra (hopefully with falling snow on Temple Square), plus I get to work 33 days straight and travel between four states six times between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it all culminates on Christmas Eve when we start tracking Santa at about 6am with updates every 15 minutes while the fire roars, the tree glows, the stockings get hung, and the eating is festive beyond belief. I'll end up staying up all night alternating between assembly/construction and sending kids back to bed. Just before I collapse in total exhaustion the kids will get up and we'll spend six hours opening presents one at a time (it takes a while with 9 of us, stuff from the grandparents, etc).

The Christmas nap, blissfully, comes around 1pm. Oxygen maybe sooner.

The day after, we start all over again RIGHT HERE for the next one.

[Head Elf]

My plan is to have all my shopping done so I can enjoy all the other people out there scrambling to buy stuff. I plan to sit on Santa's lap and tell him that I have been "good" all year, I don't know if he will buy that tho'. I plan on enjoying the holiday season. My husband has to work through the holdiay's (7/12's) so I won't be seeing him that much. And I am planning next years Christmas Cards and how to decorate the outside.

[elfworks]

i have nothing planned yet other than the dessert menu for thanksgiving.

johnor - and part of my regular dessert menu is a pile of sweet vol-au-vents. 3 or 4 different fillings. i like to do savory ones for brunches and things in the spring.

xo

[Jinglebelle]

I'm a more stay at home type Christmas fiend... I go out and look at the lights in the hood, and around town... but my family and aquantences don't care for the season like I do. This (unless we move) will be my 2nd Christmas in Texas... there's a nice little parade downtown that I will most likely drag my kid to, and a Christams fair in the town square after that. I do make (and the scrooge's I live with expect) a big Christmas dinner. Aside from that I will prolly send out 30 or 40 cards... and that's about it.

[Jinglebelle]

Oh... I forgot... of course I will totally deck the halls, and I'm planning on having two trees this year. I'm also going to have a bigger light display outside. I'm afraid of heights (and getting killed falling off a ladder) so I will have to beg, plead, and bribe my hubby to help with the lights. Keep your fingers crossed!

[JOHNOR]

i have nothing planned yet other than the dessert menu for thanksgiving.

johnor - and part of my regular dessert menu is a pile of sweet vol-au-vents. 3 or 4 different fillings. i like to do savory ones for brunches and things in the spring.

xo

they sound delicious, do you have any recipes for me? sweet and savoury? thank you!

[elfworks]

actual recipes?? uhm. no. sorry. i just sort of put stuff together. and i buy the pastry. youre a drama coach... IMPROVISE!!!! just take flavors you like and go for it. i did one last year based solely on the fact that i love hazelnuts and had some around the kitchen. and i had some frangelico. and some pork chops in the freezer. coarsley ground the nuts and sauteed em in a little butter and olice oil, tossed in some mince shallot then added the chops (that i had defrosted and cubed) cooked them til almost done added some cream and the frangelico. reduced it to thicken the sauce a bit...... got out some store-bought puff pastry, cut out the rings and the tops, baked em. voila! vol-au-vents!! and if i am lucky, sometimes my store has the PEPPERIDGE FARM puff pastry shells so i dont even have to do any cutting.

im sure there are a bazillion recipes out ther for v-a-v, but i am sure that whoever posted them just had a wild hair one day and threw some stuff together they had around.

one night not too long ago, some friends stopped by unexpectedly and ended up staying for dinner. i had some chocolate chips and nuts in the cupboard and some of the pepperidge farm pastry shells inthe freezer. put some cream in a pan and warmed it while i was toasting the pecans. threw the chocolate chips into the cream then added the nuts. ladled that into the baked shells and added some strawberries.

for thanksgiving i usually do some with apumpkin andcream filling or a ginger and cream filling. and i do one with mascarpone and cranberries. but again, no actual recipes.
sorry.

xo

[JOHNOR]

you have made me so hungry! i am going to try the pork chop recipe!

[elfworks]

now... that wasnt a RECIPE!!

:D

xo

[JanaBanana]

In the past years we have taken the kids on a boat trip to see
The Coeur d'Alene Resort Holiday Light Show (In Idaho) "Journey to the North Pole...
More than a million lights sparkle across Lake Coeur d'Alene as The Coeur d'Alene Resort's Holiday Light Show, the largest on-the-water resort holiday light show in America.. Its so much fun! The boat then stops in front of Santa and Mrs. Claus's house which is the biggest display I have ever seen, and he calls out to each child on the boat asking if they have been good this year? We have hot cocoa and enjoy the show! The mountains are covered in snow and it just feels like something our of a Charles Dickens movie.. I also want to be there for the lighting of the largest Living Christmas tree

The world’s tallest living Christmas tree, standing 161 feet and decorated with more than 30,000 lights, will be unveiled during Thanksgiving weekend’s premier of the Holiday Light Show at The Coeur d’Alene Resort.
The Grand Fir (abies grandis) overlooks Lake Coeur d’Alene from the shoreline home of Duane Hagadone, the owner of the award-winning Resort in Northern Idaho that this year celebrated its 20th anniversary. To put the size of the Christmas tree in perspective, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in New York City is approximately 75 feet tall, less than half the size of the Coeur d’Alene giant. Atop the tree will be a lighted 10-foot-tall star!

[JayIsh]

Jana you are playing my song!!! That sounds like just about the coolest thing going! I love the winter, the snow, the cold...My wife likes the heat...Probably not much chance of my ever seeing the beautiful sight that you've described but it sounds like a fantastic event...Your kids must love it!!!

jay

[Rennabelle]

Oh Jana, that sounds just wonderful. I would love to see that, you will have to take pictures and post them. AAAAAAAAAA wait a minute, I haven't been a member here long enough to know if we have a picture post here or not. Will have to check that out.

We have a few places around here that has lights from Thanksgiving on. One is at a park in Roseburg that is pretty spectacular. The other is over at Shore Acres in Charleston, Oregon. I really like that one, it brings back lots of memories walking through there. We get to go into the old house there and have hot cocoa and cookies and tour the house. When you are on the second floor you can overlook most of the park and see the lights. They have lots of sea animal shapes in lights, dolphins jumping and water splashing, whales and such. It truely is a new way to see sea life.

We also have a truck light parade each year and the parade goes right by my house, so we have a big get together here. We usually have a soup dinner, several people bring soups, the rest bring breads, salads, desserts and etc. When the parade starts we go outside and have a fire going in outside fireplace and sit around the patio. The kids make smores and have a blast. The older folks usually stay indoors and stay warm while they sip on hot cocoa or hot spiced cider.

[JanaBanana]

Yes its an amazing trip! Whats really great about it... they dont charge for kids 12 and under! Can you believe that :) I will try and get some good pics to share....

Renna your Truck Light parade sound like a lot of fun! One day I would love to go Christmas Caroling like my hubby use to do...

[Chillywilly]

Are plans this year is to start our Christmas Season is to get out there early on Black Friday (the weekend of Thanksgivings). We get out there for all of the Earliy Bird sales that we can. We get most of our shopping done that weekend. Maybe 65% of it anyway. It is very fun the day before Thanksgiving we go through all of the newspaper adds to see where we want to go and plan who's going to go where, because of the line that are out there.Our plan is to have our Christmas Tree up on Thanksgiving night. We start early so that we can enjoy the Holiday that much longer. :tree:On Christmas eve we all get together and sing carols and drink egg nog and favored coffees with desert. Everyone join in with the preparation for Christmas Dinner.

On Christmas day we open gifts around 5:00am and we have an early dinner so that we can go to both my parents and my mother-laws for their Christmas dinner and gifts opening.

:give:

[tnchristmas]

My sisters and I are in the midst of planning our annual Christmas shopping excursion. We will leave Thanksgiving night for New York City. We will shop and enjoy the decorations at Macy's, Saks 5th Ave (ok, not so much shopping there. Ha!) etc. We will go to the Holiday Markets at Bryant Park and elsewhere and just generally enjoy the city and each other. That is the extent of my early Christmas planning so far...

[dvdguy]

i wish i could get into nyc to see everything for christmas. It would be a heck of a drive though

[Merry Sage]

October is a busy month for me. Due to my husband Kevan's work schedule, our Summer holiday got moved to the end of September. A nice rest before the fireworks begin in October; three birthdays, Thanksgiving (Canadian) and Halloween!

November 5th is Bonfire Night here, formerly Guy Fawkes Day. His family usually do a backyard bbq and mini fireworks at one or another's house.

As for Christmas, at this point, I've pretty much got the menu worked out (we're hosting Kev's family's annual get together this year). The rest I'm writing down as I think of it.

Oh my word. Is it really just 138 days til The Big One? http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b90/merrysage/panic.gif

[tnchristmas]

dvdguy-
If you can ever make the trip to NYC around Christmas-time, you'll be hooked! :-) It's just incredible!

[dvdguy]

oh yes, ive been there. Its just a long trip from florida. It was easier when i was in jersey

[JAboc]

this year is going to be real hard ... my past 3 years i spent most of my time with my girlfriend and well since she's gone i'm kind of in the loop of what to do sure i have my family but no one close to hold and buy gifts specifically for .. but it's only august so who knows right? :?

[Dawnfletch]

25th Nov i send out all my cards,30th Nov put up the advent calenders,1st Dec i put all my things up,i dont know where we are going to put everything yet as we are moving house end of sept. Christmas eve we are stopping in,im going to put a christmas film on for Joseph,then when hes been in the bath he can put milk,cookies & carrot out for santa,& the raindeer dust. Christmas day we are stopping at home just the 3 of us with it been our first 1 as a family.I know ill wake up & cry.

[JOHNOR]

aww dawn, that sounds lovely! how old is your little one? it sounds like you will really enjoy xmas. will be visiting relatives at all?

[kidzrme]

Every year I have a Christmas party at my house with all of my close friends. My family is very close and we have all kinds of holiday activities that we do together. This year my daughter will be a Freshman in college(way out in Arizona, 3,000 miles away) she leaves on August 23, and will not be back until December 15th! We will have a very Merry Christmas this year, although it will be hard to decorate without her!

[Dawnfletch]

Hi he is 6months old,we use to go & see the nieces open there presents,but last year was the last time,as we have our own son to watch open his presents.

[Head Elf]

Now the fun begins with you and your little one. Good luck with the move....

The 25th of Nov is my birthday and I'll have the cards sent out the day after Thanksgiving, the house is getting decorated then as well as the outside. The dinner is already planned, just have to find the right kind of wine for it. Only 130 + days to go! I can hardly wait.
Back to you Dawn...... I wish I get over there to see my cousin in Northampton. And the other cousins in Sussex. But take it one day at a time and enjoy the holiday.