I have been frightfully busy these last few weeks, getting ready for Christmas and preparing everything. Only two months to go!
This year most of my presents will be homemade, so there is a lot to do. Most of my Friends & Relations have everything, and what they lack they buy themselves, so giving home-made gifts seems a good alternative to the cheap & nasty stuff that passes as generic Christmas presents these days.
Before I start to create my various offerings I needed to assemble the ingredients, and that's what I have been doing. You might think home-made gifts are easy, but aside from making them you have to get your mitts on suitable containers, and that can be quite labour intensive.
I bought wax for dipping candles, preserving jars and assorted empty jam jars for filling with quince jelly and Rumtopf, small bottles for home-made wine and spirits, cellophane bags for biscuits, and many rolls of wrapping paper.
I also discovered, at Oxfam, small canvas bags, decorated in a christmassy fashion, which will be perfect for filling with a few small gifts. I am particularly excited about these latter, because I have been meaning to crochet such bags for years. Of course one is always too busy, so the bags never got made, but these Oxfam ones will stand in until I have made enough of my own. I did get some green and red acrylic yarn - wool might be too alluring for moths - and have started to crochet my first bag.
The idea of these bags is that they are reusable, so instead of having to buy wrapping paper each year I can just re-fill these bags every Christmas. 'Course, there is a catch - if I give them away I won't get them back, just like I don't get the little jars and bottles back that I give away. Well, perhaps the lucky recipients will re-use the bags, so at least they will save on wrapping paper!
So the next two months will be busy ones! I need to dip two dozen candles, produce a dozen pots of jelly, candy the peel of nine oranges and three lemons and dip them in chocolate (already in progress), bake six to eight different types of cookies, make marshmallows, roll sugarplums, and decant alcoholic concoctions into little bottles. Plus I need to finish off the Rumtopf; I bought a large bottle of overproof rum yesterday, and also need to add a few more fruit - I am thinking plums and maybe reine claudes, if I can lay my hands on any.
Plus I have to wrap presents, of course! I do have a little pile of non-home-made things, mainly for myself, to be sure, but my relatives in far off lands also get them, seeing as it is illegal to send home-made alcohol and such like in the post these days. I have been hoarding things since the last January sales, as usual. The prices are lower and there is no stress.
One of my favourite past times in the week just before Christmas is to promenade down major shopping streets and watch all the idiots making last minute purchases, wearing a look of smug superiority on my face. I am never one for last minute anything - half the time the shops are out of what one wants if one waits until the last minute, and instead of buying a really nice present one ends up with whatever leftovers have survived the great shopping craze that dominates the Highstreet from November onwards.
In addition to the above mentioned activities I have also lined up a few nice pre-Christmas get-togethers with friends, visits to shows and other christmassy attractions, like Dennis Severs House, Winter Wonderland, and a show featuring Henning Wehn (German comedian), and of course visits to Paris.
I am in for a few fun-filled, thoroughly enjoyable months!
Lots of posts, too, I expect!
