Christmas preparations

I’ve been so busy the past few weeks that I’ve barely had time to breath, let alone decorate my Christmas tree or blog. I’ve been working extra shifts at the store which wasn’t that bad actually: baking an obscene amount of gingerbread men, decorating them, jazzing up the window display and climbing in three Christmas trees. Add to that a very important deadline (my first book page) and the usual domestic disturbances plus my dearly beloved yet equally disturbed mother and grandmother and you end up with no spare time whatsoever. Seriously, I don’t have the time or the energy to work fulltime.

Luckily things are slowly winding down now so I can finally get down to business: my own Christmas preparations. I usually start right after Sinterklaas so I’m particularly late this year. The only thing that went according to plan was buying presents, god bless the internet.

This week however, the pumpkin surprised me with my very first real Christmas tree! We usually have a small but really pretty plastic one seeing as I’m a Christmas nut and he’s basically Scrooge so I was really surprised, my insistent nagging must finally be wearing him down. Anyway, the only downside besides it being a white one, was having no ornaments to sproose up this gigantic tree.

So this weekend besides doing all the shopping for the Christmas parties I’ll be hosting this week, we had to get some cheap and easy decorations because I doubt we’ll get another bad boy next year. With a little help from Ikea and Ella Fitzgerald playing her swinging tunes, I had a great time turning our Tree (seriously, it’s an actual Tree not a cute Christmassy tree) into something a little more festive. Sadly, I had to clean the entire apartment afterwards.

Today I started with my food preparations. We usually go to England in December so I can get all my Christmas trimmings but this year we simply didn’t have the time which is why I made mincemeat from scratch for the very first time. It’s not the traditional kind but it’s very easy and the smell is simply divine: lots of spices, fruit and booze. Yum, yum, yum. Bring on the pies!

This afternoon I’m assisting the pumpkin with some last minute shopping seeing as he believes buying gifts is the most stressful and frustrating waste of time, ever. So yeay! And afterwards we might check out the Christmas market in good ol’ Antwerp before I start another week of working, baking, indulging needy relatives, grocery shopping, cleaning and hosting a couple of parties. Thank god, I don’t have anymore deadlines.