Tag Archives: Family Christmas

Making a Special Christmas Dinner

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As I shared a few days ago, our Christmas was a bit different this year. And certainly not what we’d planned. 

Of course we had a good reason for it being a bit different, because five days before our daughter and her husband presented us with a new baby boy…5 weeks early. Our tiny grandbaby was definitely the best gift we’ve ever received for Christmas. 

But he certainly caused us to use a lot of creativity and ingenuity in order to create a festive dinner with only 24 hours to plan it, since we didn’t know until the day before if our new mom would be up to traveling (which she wasn’t). And although not what we usually do, we made it work. 

Fortunately my best friend Karen is an event planner who specializes in creative picnics for various occasions. She was already included in our family dinner, and we put her decorating and cooking skills to work to help put together and set up a traveling Christmas dinner at our daughter’s house, complete with all the gifts, food, and even impromptu table decorations gathered up from my Christmas craft supplies. 

A festive occasion calls for a properly decorated table, as well as a good presentation of the food, even if we had to improvise a bit. 

Which we did.

After our preparing almost everything in my kitchen and Karen’s, we packed up two cars, one with gifts and one with food, and headed to our daughter’s home some 30 minutes away.

Trying to put together dinner in someone else’s home, even if you’ve prepared almost everything in advance, isn’t the easiest thing to do, as many of you know. Although we tried to bring all the serving pieces, serving dishes, etc., there were still things we had to finish in an unfamiliar setting, which called for more improvising, including searching for sharp knives, saucepans, and the like. Our son in law had to clean his fishing knife in order to carve the turkey, and then we had to warm up the gravy in a small fry pan, which was all we could find.

Not to mention having to use an oven that wasn’t properly calibrated, which meant we had to guess at the time it took to bake my “famous” cinnamon buns! (Thank goodness we were able to figure the cooking time out and they turned out perfect!)

Karen used a tablecloth and napkins I’d brought, along with a few candles our daughter had, and put together our dinner table. Yes, we used paper plates and cups, but it worked. 

And the new big sisters pretended they were at a restaurant at their own special table and even used their “menus” to order their meal! But they did forget to leave their servers a tip. Even after having a third serving of my cinnamon buns.

But all of this just continues to reinforce that Christmas isn’t about fancy decorations, or food that looks like it came from a restaurant or the pages of a magazine. It’s about family and friends, being together, and loving each other. We were together and that’s what counted the most. 

Definitely a Christmas Day we won’t forget. Especially with our newest member of the family!

Hope yours was wonderful as well!

Each Tree Has a Story, Part 2

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Yes, I do love Christmas trees. For me, the Christmas season starts as soon as the first tree is decorated. It just brings such a festive, happy feeling to the house. And yes, I did say the “first” tree. As you’ve probably figured out by now, we do have more than one.

I’ve always had a Christmas tree every year, even after I had places of my own. I started collecting ornaments my last year in college, and actually still have a few from those early years. They were inexpensive ones, of course, but I bought them because I liked them, and even almost fifty years ago, my tree had a theme to it. I liked the strands of plastic popcorn and candy for the garland, as well as the cupcakes and cookie shaped ornaments and a set of pink popcorn shaped ornaments that I still have, although they’re now on another tree. (Some of my ornaments do move around.)  

But I’ve come a long way from that first tree that I created for myself.

When my husband and I were first together, he helped me decorate my tree. We collected new ornaments together, and we still have a very special Hallmark ornament “First Christmas Together”.  It quickly became a tradition every year to collect at least one special ornament that was dated, so we could watch the progression of our life together. Our family Christmas tree was created.

Of course, it wasn’t just one ornament a year…more like four or five. Four or five each time I’d go out Christmas shopping, that is. After all, they were there in the stores, staring at me from those display trees, and well, I just couldn’t resist some of them. They were so cute. And I knew they’d look perfect on our tree.

There’s always room for one more ornament, isn’t there? And we had a big tree…

And there really wasn’t a theme then. Like most of you, I imagine, I just started collecting ornaments I liked, and because a Christmas tree can really be anything you want it to be, that tree became a myriad of colors, shapes, and sizes. Candies, animals, Santa Clauses and snowmen, flamingos, and oh yes, let’s not forget all the Hallmark Barbie ornaments. I don’t think I missed a year of not getting at least one, and now if I find one on eBay I don’t have, well, let’s just say I make sure it joins my collection. But more on that later.

It turned out that we didn’t have a big enough tree after all, because after our daughter was born, we had to have the Hallmark series ornaments for Baby’s First Christmas, and then the rest of them which went through year five. And yes, they’re still on there. Of course we started collecting a lot of ornaments with children’s themes then, many of which I’ve actually given to our daughter now for her tree.

Still, that one tree kept getting fuller and fuller every year, but I still had to have just one or two (or five or six) more ornaments each year. It was tradition. After all, it was our family Christmas tree. And it was filled with a wide array of different ornaments we’d collected over our years together, so many that I was actually running out of branches to put them on.

I soon realized that one 7 1/2 foot tree in the corner of our family room just wasn’t going to be enough any more. And looking around the house, I realized the rooms looked kind of plain compared to the family room, even with all the silk poinsettias and holly and other decorations sitting around.

So what do you do?

That answer should be obvious. I’ll tell you all about that in a few more days. Watch for “Each Tree Has a Story, Part 3” to be published on December 8.