26 posts tagged “christmas”
So it's that time of year again. I suspect I may be a little earlier than usual, but if I am I lay it at the feet of the Royal Mail who have me in all of a tizz trying to work out how late I can send Christmas presents to Australia without strike action meaning they won't arrive till March or something.
So the usual applies - this is intended to guide those who want to give me a present but have no clue where to start - it's not intended to beg for gifts from anyone who didn't intend that thought when they came here! It's a long list for the simple reason that I like Christmas to be full of surprises and a long list gives more scope for surprise. I've also tried to include a variety of budget- and long-distance-post-friendly options so you should find something appropriate here - if not, feel free to deviate and invent - hopefully this should give you a few ideas.
If you do decide to send me something from this list, please email djelibeybi what you've chosen, to avoid possible doubling-up. If you don't have his email, let me know :-)
(Sorry it's a little half-baked - one of the problems of blogging a list like this on your iPod on the tube is you can't look anything up and I'm past my bedtime now)
So without further ado, here we go!
Vefa's Kitchen - Phaidon's big Greek cookbook
Hummingbird Bakery cookbook
Le Creuset Poterie lasagne dish in red or red-orange
Le Creuset Poterie ramekins or mini casserole dishes w lids - 6 for
pref in red or red-orange but 2 would make a perfectly acceptable start
Amazon vouchers *again* - I think this is the third year in a row that these have been in here and still no takers *sigh*
Book of David Hockney UK paintings from Tate shop (when I get a chance, I'll hunt out the actual name of it. Big book. It's got all his Yorkshire paintings in it, including the ones he's started doing which are a combination of photos and painting)
Nico Muhly Mothertongue
Camera - Canon G11 or Panasonic Lumix TZ-7 (I think - need to double-check the Lumix number. Will do that this weekend. I doubt there'll be a rush for this one in the next couple of days though...)
An original artwork by Simone O'Callaghan - I've always wanted one of her prints and her prices are ridiculously reasonable. Ask djeli if you need her email address.
Wooden knitting needles - interchangeable ends circular set (link will come when there's time...)
Row counter
Shoulder massage device - something designed to remove tension knots, not just feel nice. I would love you forever if you can really find something that will take out knots. Doubly so if it will fit tidily into a handbag.
Colinette chunky yarn - yah. yummy stuff. can't remember the name (see earlier note re: weekend)
Sock knitting books! There's a couple of them, but (again), I'll need to look them up
2 skeins Koigu sock yarn - so can actually make socks with it this time (one skein per foot, in case you're not a knitter and you're wondering - can't get a whole pair out of one skein!)
Artists' sketchbooks book (see re: weekend)
iTunes voucher (must be in ££s though - AuD can't be used in the UK store) - lots of little digital helpers I'd like to get - the full version of Karajan ear training for a start!
... and if all that's not enough, there was a lot left over from last year's list too - anything not formatted with strikeout is fair game :-)
just a quick post today - we're back from denmark, had an awesome awesome time, saw a ton of stuff (photos will follow on flickr) and had a most marvellous christmas, one of the results of which is that djeli and i are now both podpeople - 8gb ipod nanos for both of us - his black, mine red, as it should be :-) this evening we've been having a ton of fun filling them up and synching contacts and calendars and so on - i had no idea they could do soooo much. i do love being able to set up multiple clocks. now i need never ever get confused about what time it is in australia - or lose my auntie madge's address when i want to send her a postcard from foreign places. and i can't believe how much room 8gb has turned out to be. i thought i might get about 30 albums on there (i don't do anything less than 320bit) but it's looking like it'll be more like 45!!! so between us that'll give about 90 albums for roadtrips. yay! tomorrow we test-drive the fm transmitter and see if it works...
other lovely treats: how to be a domestic goddess from my friend chris, a bunch of marvellous books, ranging from the sublime (a book on the santiago pilgrim trail) to the ridiculous (jilly cooper's appassionata) and an assortment of other delights. as a surprise souvenir of our danish christmas, as well as to give us a decoration in our hotel room, djeli bought me this year's christmas mobile from georg jensen, being ever so surreptitious about it.
tomorrow we have our house inspection that we were supposed to have the morning we left except that the owner got stuck in traffic and we had a plane to catch, then off into town to buy the last presents for the relations we're going to see over new year and ipod cases so our new little darlings don't get all scratched up. then off to sussex for new year!
have a great new year, everyone - see you in 2008!
yup. i'm off. i hope you all have a fabulously merry christmas and an equally fabulously happy new year.
oh dear. missed another day. well, in my defence, i did try last night. i went hunting for a recording of personent hodie specially for jdavid, who seems to be the only person to have admitted to having a favourite carol in the christmas meme, but alas! in spite of my moderately wide-ranging collection of christmas music, i have no personent! i actually went through everything three times, but then lost heart and went to bed.
so, in place of personent hodie, i now present to you another latin hymn. this recording is defective in that harry christopher and the sixteen don't seem to have realised that this one needs to be sung in a broad australian accent and preferably through the nose: "gow-day-tay" etc.
because it sounds like we're likely to encounter a fair amount of rain and/or snow in copenhagen and there's nothing nicer at the end of a day tramping round in slush than to come home and have freshly cosy feet.
and now, following my discourse on foot clothing, you have forgotten that i already posted one carol, so here is another:
tomorrow i have to face the horror of cleaning up the entire house (which is in an uproar) in two days while packing, baking, organising and trying to make sure i haven't forgotton anything, because our landlords have sprung an inspection on us on friday morning before we leave for the airport. aaaaargh!
went and saw the golden compass (ack! it's not a flipping compass! the book is called northern lights for a reason, you marketing twerps!) tonight. but too tired to give any sort of critique here now. i'd end up chucking in a bunch of spoilers and then everyone would hate me. except that everyone i know will of course have read the books by now because they're just too too amazing to miss, eh?
your christmas music for the day, because i'm feeling tired and sentimental is walking in the air from the snowman which seems to be a christmas classic over here but which i'd never heard of before we moved over. i know this was aled jones' party piece when he was a lad, but still. this is not him.
i am pleased to say, i have wasted just about the entire day. i count this an achievement.
this morning i woke up late and discovered that - at 11am - the frost was still thick on the ground, so how could i resist? i bundled up and went for a walk down to the park. what a perfect winter's morning - the sun was bright, the sky was blue, there were birds and squirrels and little yappy dogs all over the place and it was quite quite perfect. see?
found this on northerngeek's vox, via the explore page and, me being me, just had to inflict it on you. you know the drill - consider yourself tagged
1. wrapping paper or gift bags? wrapping paper, every time. there are a few odd occasions where gift bags work (e.g. when i was given jacques-etienne - have you ever tried to wrap a teddy bear???) but overall, they seem to indicate a lack of willingness to really try. wrapping in our family is very important. there are a few key rules: 1. wrapping for family members must be fresh, not recycled from previous years 2. wrapping and card must both be kept as secret from the receiver as the actual present, until the point where they appear under the tree 3. if possible, put a ribbon round it. maybe two ribbons. if you can squeeze in a little fluffy toy or a christmas decoration on the present too in a stylish and elegant manner, then you go straight to the top of the class.
2. real tree or artificial? artificial. couldn't handle all those pine needles. BUT i'm very fussy about my artificial trees - can't stand the plastic sort that are trying to be real. the only right sort is the type that's made from green tinselly stuff.
3. when do you put up the tree? 1 december
4. when do you take the tree down? 6 january (epiphany, twelfth night) - when at uni i used to have friends round for dinner on twelfth night, which gave me an excellent excuse to make a sort-of twelfth-night cake, filled with custard (any excuse for custard). haven't done that in ages. maybe i should do it again this year.
5. do you like eggnog? i love the word eggnog. have never actually had the opportunity to taste it though. it's not the sort of thing that goes with a 40-degree-C christmas. roast turkey, ham, christmas pudding, yes, but we seem to draw the line at eggnog.
6. favourite gift received as a child? my cat
7. do you have a nativity scene? nope. not a tradition in our family. i seem to dimly recall asking if we could get one when i was a child and being told that only catholics have nativity scenes.
8. hardest person to buy for? my da
9. easiest person to buy for? generally my mother. what tends to happen is that i can't find anything for her for ages and then i can't stop finding things for her.
10. worst christmas gift ever received? a kris kringle present from someone who didn't know me very well. it was easy to see the reasoning: likes music and works very hard = relaxation cd. what she obviously didn't realise was that that stuff makes me want to break speakers... still, it's the thought that counts, eh?
11. mail or email christmas card? both. mail for the rellies in australia and anyone i have a snailmail address for who i remember to send one to, email/blog/flickr posting for invisible online friends, people i don't have snailmail addresses for and people who i was just too disorganised to get around to sending a real card to.
12. favourite christmas movie? hard to pick just one. there's sort of a trinity of tradition here: white christmas, miracle on 34th street (the original) and it's a wonderful life
13. when do you start shopping for christmas? far too late. generally i start panicking and thinking of lists as soon as i realise that we have yet again missed the seamail deadline (start of october), with actual shopping starting about 1-2 weeks before the airmail deadline (start of december).
14. have you ever recycled a christmas present? gosh no. that would be sacrilege.
15. favourite thing to eat at christmas? the traditional christmas breakfast. every year in australia i would host a christmas breakfast for all our friends. the menu would change a little from year to year, but generally would include: ten tons of homemade gingerbread men, decorated with mini m&ms, blueberry muffins, cheerios (cocktail frankfurts, that is, not the cereal), my mother's sausage rolls, homemade alcoholic icy poles (always the mango daiquiri ones, others depending on the mood of the chef and the time available), homemade non-alcoholic icy poles (most notably lemon-lime, and a rather amazing lindt dark chocolate ice cream)
16. clear lights or colored on the tree? coloured
17. favourite christmas song? if you've been reading this blog over the past month, you'll realise that that's way too hard a question to answer. today's carol is just one of the many, but is one i particularly love singing. this recording isn't ideal (i don't seem to have an ideal one among the three or four on my hard drive) - it's a little slow and the lower parts of the glorias are a little furry, but at least they're on pitch, which can sometimes be... challenging :-)
18. travel at christmas or stay at home? stay at home. in my family it's certain death to not be around at christmas. you can imagine how popular we've been, being over here for the past two, and now this one as well. this year will be the first christmas we've gone away and also the first christmas (and possibly the only christmas!) we'll have spent on our own.
19. can you name santa's reindeer? i could, but i wouldn't like to without meeting them first. it would seem rude.
20. do you have an angel on top or a star? neither. for some odd reason, the tradition in our family is always to have a santa on top.
21. open the presents christmas eve or morning? christmas morning. although this year it will be christmas eve because of pretending to be danish, and that way we can also do our presents at the same time my parents are doing theirs in sydney on christmas morning and we can all natter away over skype.
22. most annoying thing about this time of year? postal deadlines
well, today i had my first attempt at cooking with real cranberries. i thought i'd try out a recipe for cranberry syrup from tessa kiros' apples for jam. it looked simple enough - take cranberries, moosh them about with some sugar, add boiling water, moosh some more, strain and let cool. what it failed to mention was that the cranberries were actually as hard as little bullets. i don't know if that's how they're supposed to be, but mooshing them was somewhat like popping bubble-wrap made of steel. anyway, the end result is a pretty colour. tomorrow we'll discover whether the flavour has been worth the effort!
today's carol is another by an australian composer, but this time an original carol rather than an arrangement, and by my teacher, peter sculthorpe.
not much to report. had to go back to high street kensington today and it seems that there are no blackberry snowflakes left in london. they cannot be had for love nor money. which i think is a grave error on the part of the otherwise fabulous hotel chocolat. and which unfortunately led to me buying more chocolate for myself. i now obviously cannot set foot in hsk again until at least january. maybe even february. actually possibly not till spring. too easy to give in in the cold weather.
anyway, on the topic of food is this carol. you sing it as you bring the boar's head to the table. of course. it's (not very surprisingly, i guess) a carol from (it seems) the 15th century and this version is an arrangement by the australian composer andrew ford. yes, he's still alive. no, there's still no need to be scared. just remember this one as you carry the ham from the kitchen to the table in a couple of weeks, eh?
... and prove to the world that i am not solely a highbrow elitist snob when it comes to christmas music. i'm not going to go as far as actual current pop-songs, but i confess i do adore a good lounge-music shot from time to time. hope you do too :-)
