Family Christmas

The past few years, since Littletree and I went through a major shift in our lives, we've been celebrating Christmas. Just quietly, in our own way. The last two years we went down to spend the holiday with my family in South Australia, but that wasn't possible this year, so we created our own special family here at home.

Littletree got involved with the google+ Secret Santa, which was awesome

We created a geeky Christmas "tree" -a binary tree made of coat hangers in a tree formation hung with manila file folders and decorated with broken tech - old USB cables, wonky gadgets, broken ADSL splitters - our 'Angel' was Andy the Android and of course we added a TARDIS.

Gifts we kept simple - of course a few sneaky treats for Littletree from Doctor Who (because we don't believe in Santa)

 

Naturally, every time Littletree wasn't looking, "The Doctor" popped by with his TARDIS and left another little present

 

We kept it simple with gifts; aside from her much appreciated Secret Santa hoard of Doctor Who merchandise and Art supplies, Littletree got a portable bluetooth speaker from me and Shark Girl

I gave Shark Girl a gift that was more shark wrapping than actual gift, and Littletree gave her a book about sharks with an altered book cover that she'd made herself

 

And Littletree and Shark Girl together got me the most incredible gift - a really nice Android Tablet :) Which is super cool and replaces the old iPad that I won back in 2010 (amazingly the 5 year old iPad still 'works' but thanks to Apple's stupid closed system, the device is completely obsolete and unusable - ironic to turn it on and find that it can't update anything and most apps aren't supported on this "out of date" technology).

I also got a very treasured gift - a friend back in Israel sent me copies of my two favourite picture books that we always travelled with and that I read to Littletree every day when she was small. I lost our original copies under sad circumstances, and I missed them very much. So it feels extra special to get these; even if only for nostalgic reasons. And I'm teaching Littletree to read more in Hebrew.

The three of us all hand-painted little singlets for the fresh baby our new housemates had (he's 6 weeks old now!)

And we had a few good friends around for an awesome barbecue. Simple, delicious. Fun times!

     

Magic Yule

Littletree woke up on Christmas morning to find some special surprises under the tree! So we snuggled in for breakfast in bed and the great unwrapping

There was a Spirit Hood from our wonderful friend Miri (check out her awesome hand-crafted hoods HERE). This one was made especially for Littletree, in a scruffy cat style – absolutely perfect for her.

A special friend sent a pair of binoculars – really good ones! Littletree is so excited about it.

From AquaCat she got two crystals, a ruby heart

and a clear quartz crystal ball

From me Littletree got something she’s been ogling for a long time – a Swiss Army Knife – especially with a magnifying glass.

So much joy and excitement!

Then we got up and made egg nog for brunch – extra special with local eggs and organic cream

So rich and so YUMMY!

Even BooBoo got a tiny bit as a special treat. He said MRAO!

We relaxed, played some games, watched a video, and then had our Epic Christmas Seafood Feast

Lobster and prawns and big salads!

Littletree went out in the afternoon to play with some neighbourhood kids while we cleaned up, and of course, rounding off the day with home made Irish Cream and tiramisu.

Happy Day!

Epic Christmas Baking

Getting ready for our epic Christmas feast, Littletree and I spent the day baking. See – I knew it would be a bad idea to introduce her to baking; now she’s hooked. And the worst part is she can read the recipes herself now. Oh, what have I done!?

First things first – making gingerbread dough… because that is the first step in the creation of a gingerbread house.

The dough turned out nicely, and left to sit in the fridge for a few hours.

Meanwhile… we made tiramisu

I love tiramisu, but it’s quite a process to make it all from scratch – lots of different mixing bowls and layers to prepare, but it’s always worth it.

Once that was in the fridge to set, we got out the gingerbread dough and started rolling it out. We discovered a great tip – roll the dough between sheets of baking paper.

I found a nice stencil online for the house shapes, but it was so ridiculously not to scale… that turned into a nice geometry lesson; Littletree had to get out a ruler and calculate the measurements and angles.

Then we discovered that the best way to cut the shapes and transfer them onto the baking tray was to actually leave the dough sandwiched between the sheets of baking paper and cut it out with scissors. Works a treat, and easy to put right onto the baking tray as-is!

After the shapes were baked and cooled, we had the epic mission of making up royal icing (epic because in the humidity, my icing sugar had solidified into a solid rock and I had to grind it by hand with a mortar and pestle back into powder form.

And then came the assembly!

After a quick lesson on how to properly handle an icing bag and nozzle, I stepped aside and let Littetree have at it.

Despite a few sticky accidents learning experiences, she got the hang of it, and the gingerbread house was made beautifully, complete with a cat on the roof.

For some reason, I never took a photo of the finished product… but none of it would have been possible if not for AquaCat coming round to do all the dishes

All set for an epic feast!

Crafty Christmas

Littletree has got the giving spirit and wanted to give all of her friends presents for Christmas. Rather than going out and buying stuff, Littletree got inspired to get crafty.

She took some simple headbands and glued on little jewels and fabric flowers

After making a few of these, the results were very impressive

Then she wrapped them up to give to friends.

As if that wasn’t enough, for an encore, she got out her beading kit and made a few pairs of earrings

I’m so impressed!

And Littletree is really proud of her efforts too :)

Christmas Popcorn

Littletree is pretty excited to be celebrating Christmas this year – she decided to decorate a tree, so we found a fallen branch outside and set it up for her to decorate

We don’t have all that much in the way of decorations, and not much of a budget to buy any, so we took a tip from my lovely friend Gramma Miri (who makes the most amazing custom-made Spirit Hoods) and made Popcorn Garlands to decorate around.

The first step being, of course, making popcorn

But as these things do with Littletree, everything turns to science. She observed the popcorn popping, and wanted to know how it works. YouTube delivered some fine slow motion shots of popcorn popping, which, of course, led us down a slow-motion videos rabbit-hole

But we did eventually make it back to popcorn, and naturally there has to be quality control.

Rigorous scientific testing of every aspect of the popcorn…

Littletree finally stopped eating long enough to actually thread some onto string and make garlands

yay!

And it looks great on the tree