Say What?!

A few days before Christmas my husband received an invite to attend a movie with a friend, in the email he requested that he not be left "Billy no mates" two days before Christmas. Now deductive reasoning allowed me to conclude that he was asking not to be left alone in the theater on Christmas Eve Eve but it was a blatant reminder of how often I am left feeling a little clueless when being spoken to here. My daughter has had similar issues and recently told me of a school mate that referred to being "On her Larry", meaning of course on her own. Billy, Larry, why are the men in this country always so lonely? I am left so often feeling just a bit dim as I have to either ask a person several times to repeat themselves until I finally defeated tell them I don't know what they mean, or I have to pause for much longer than is comfortable while I work out in my head the correct response. Once they see the glazed look of someone slightly slow on the uptake cross your eyes they will slow down and try to use small words you are likely to understand, although this does very little to help you feel clever especially when they end the sentence with, "Now-Where-Are-You-From?". They insist that we in fact speak the same language but I find myself constantly asking, eh? Tea instead of dinner, pudding instead of dessert, lorries rather than trucks, mate not friends, crisps in place of chips because of course chips are what I would call fries. My very Canadian brain still answers their standard greeting of, "Hiya, all alright there?" with "fine" which I know is wrong but I am still very much expecting "Hi, How are you?".  When someone tells me they are chuffed my knee jerk response is to ask what is wrong, chuffed sounds like an annoyed word to me, it's not. Someone is chuffed when things are going smoothly, in fact my husband tells me that his coworkers are 'chuffed as nuts' when things work and run well on a projects. I have never really thought of a nut as being happy or sad but on the other hand we Canadians use nuts to refer to someone who's gone a bit crazy. Perhaps it is some strange mash up of the two idioms and what it means is that the speaker is as happy as a person who has lost their mind?

Don't get me wrong, so much of the slang and differences in our languages I find charming. There is something so much more welcoming about a sales clerk leaning over the till and calls out, "can I help?", rather than the much more aggressive sounding "Next" we would use across the pond. I still can't help but smile when I hear someone ask, 'Are you having a laugh?'. Seems more fun to say than 'are you joking?'. I have adopted the extremely common 'cheers' but still can't shake the Canadian habit of using thanks as well and end up mashing the two together in quick succession which probably leaves those helping me with a sense that I am very very grateful. So I guess my point is that there is absolutely no doobt aboot it, I am Canadian, eh?! On the other hand I am chuffed as nuts to be here and I am most definitely not having a laugh.

Happy New Years Everyone!

Christmas at Blenheim Palace

Having a yearly pass to the Palace was made worth while just for getting to visit at Christmas time. The entire Palace and much of the grounds are completely decked out with Christmas trees, ornaments, and music. You can't turn many corners before you run into more of the most impressive trees you've ever seen. If you fall in love with the wonderful scented trees, you are able to purchase a fresh cut from right on the grounds version to take home with you. 

They celebrate the season here by honouring Charles Dickens and using quotes from his 'A Christmas Carol' and donning the halls with period appropriate ornamentation. I have a very good friend who happens to think Dickens is one of the very greats and I couldn't help having her run through my thoughts as we toured the various displays. 

 

Not one to over look an opportunity to daydream something more romantic, I couldn't help picturing the spirits of the festively decorated busts waiting for the castle to clear out so they can creep from the shadows and toast the season themselves. It was hard not to be carried to a time when ladies in large hoop skirts and gentlemen in pressed suits would have been greeted in the entrance hall by their hosts. 

We were welcomed by the sounds of a choir trying with gusto to fill the building with beautiful Christmas music and when the needed a rest were replaced by a multi piece brass band. Although they filled the hall magnificently the sheer size of the Palace means that before too many turns the music is lost to the walls. 

While we were in the Palace that day they had a large staff of people preparing the massive library for an upcoming party to be held there. There were many more trees, tables and little nutcrackers peeking out from their napkin resting place. I wondered momentarily what one has to do or be to be invited to this kind of event, I suspect be willing to pay large amounts of money for whatever they were planning to put on that plate.

Finally we found our very own Dickens to read excerpts from his famed story leaving me with the desire to rush home and reread it myself. Visiting Blenheim at this time of year can't help but lift the spirits, make you feel very festive, and leave you wondering how in the world you get the job of decorating all those trees!

    

Countdown to Christmas

So here's the story, I worked at Fossil for quite a long time and besides falling in love with watches, purses and people, I fell in love with the display pieces. They would often use cute vintage boxes and wooden benches in the window and shelf displays and most of them were easy to fall for. A little known secret is that after the visual merchandisers decided that they would never use these display items again they were added to a toss sheet. this meant shopping for the staff who worked there, in fact usually as soon as a particularly nice one would come in one of the staff would stick a long piece of tape on in somewhere and write their name on it, claiming it for whenever it would be added to that list. When this shelf came in there was nearly a blood bath trying to be the first to get a name on it. There were several discussions about how they would be used and I took one look at it and said, "Advent calendar!". I am proud to say that one got me the right to claim it, and even though I had left the company before it made it to the throw out list my good friends still working there had my back.

 

 

I will admit when I first saw it, and knew that it would make a great advent calendar, I dreamt about how great the treats would be that I could fit in those slots. For the record you can fit four full sized chocolate bars in each space, or four kinder eggs or I imagine many of your preferred options. However as we got closer to the first time I would pull it out and use it I got slightly more sentimental and saw the potential for something a little different. I decided that I would give us an activity countdown instead, each day wrapped in a little present to be opened and then done as a family. In a fit of pride at it's completion I took a picture and posted it to Facebook. Most people took absolutely no notice, but a couple of people got very interested in what we did each day. One of these people was my sister in law who insisted that it would make a great blog topic, so this one is for her. I suppose since I did bring the thing across the ocean, it should get some recognition.



So the first thing I do is create a long list of activities that I think would be fun to do with the family, movie nights, picnics by the Christmas tree, and so on. I look on line, pinterest is one of my favorites but a general google search or checking out what's going on in your community are also great places to start. Then I write out a list of the days of the month and what other activities we have going on in December all in an attempt to not over extend ourselves on any given day.

 

 

This also helps me remember what activities are coming up so that when they open the box I am ready for whatever it says and things run a little smoother then. This becomes the thing I look at most through December I think. Once this step is complete I make the boxes. This year I didn't have any Christmas colored origami paper and so I used white paper that I squared off and drew designs on myself.

 

 

 

The next step is to fold them into box shape, truthfully this takes longer than you think it might. If you opt to do something similar I suggest Christmas carols and hot chocolate, this really helps me stay festive feeling. Okay shameless plug, my good friend Maren Ord has a tune available to buy called, "The King is Born", buy it! It is my favorite, friendship aside, honestly I listen to it over and over.

 

 

 

 

Eventually you end up with a beautiful pile of boxes that looks something like this. As they are pulled off each day and opened they reveal what we will be doing that day.

 

 

 

The last thing that I do is go to the grocery store and pick out the goodies that will fill the few days I selected to just have something sweet. Last year we had them only on the weekend but somewhat wiser, well more experienced, I chose days that were our busiest with other things. Then I load them into the shelf.

 

 

 

I am always a tiny bit sad when we start emptying it out because I enjoy the way it looks all full. As I really enjoy the quality family time this forces us to have I sacrifice the finished product. I would love to hear some of the things you guys do with your family, might be inspiration for me next year. I will try to post later in the month with pictures of some of the things we did together, in the mean time, only 23 sleeps to Christmas!!