Our Christmas2012!!

I know I was planning on doing a splurge vs save every Friday but since I finally finished writing this up and if I leave it any longer, it will be over a month since Christmas, you're getting this instead.  ;)

OK, so it's one month on but I had to share it all!  Christmas Day was fab, after a lovely chilled out Christmas Eve, we had an equally lovely chilled out day.  For breakfast I made this recipe from Pinterest (I initially thought it was a cinnamon roll recipe due to the title on Pinterest but you can't go wrong with a fancy sausage roll, even if I did count wrong and forget a trunk!)...

Which was swiftly followed by stockings and pressies!...

MIL is thrilled with her iPad!

Nik was delighted with his case of wine from Mum & Dad.

Here are just lovely pressies...

Super cute elephant from MIL & FIL from Sri Lanka

Gorgeous pansy clutch from MIL & FIL

CD from hubby

Gorgeous earrings from BIL & SIL

Jam thermometer from Santa!

Jewellery box from MIL & FIL

Leather jacket from hubby!

Eye-shadow from MIL & FIL

Cosy socks from hubby!

We then has some Christmas cake and opened the magnum of Champagne we'd saved since Nik's parents had given us after his brother's wedding in May.  I struggled to get into the fizz so Nik had to take over, but I felt better when he struggled too!

Gorgeous Christmas cake, made by MIL :)

We should have really hidden the glass recycling!

We all got busy in the kitchen as FIL started peeling, I made the starter.  The smoked salmon pate had gone down so well at our Christmas party and was so easy to make, we decided to make it again!  This time I used a heart dish to mould it and Santa served the soda bread ;)

FIL helping MIL with her new toy after lunch
(or rather, trying to steal a go on the iPad!)

Snowflakes on the kitchen windows

For dinner we had roast rib of beef, sprouts (done my special way with garlic and sesame seeds), carrots with honey & caraway seeds, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, Yorkshire puddings and the most amazing blue cheese & port gravy!

Amazing port and blue cheese gravy!

Nik donned his new apron from Julie and Graham.

Obligatory cracker hats of course...

Stuffed to the brim, we all changed into PJs (or onesie) and settled into the living room for some festive viewing - there actually wasn't much on but we settled on Blackadder's Christmas Carol.

On boxing day, my brother came to visit so we Skyped with Mum and Dad (who live in Saudi) and had a lovely lunch with leftovers, cheese, bread (baked by Nik) and ginger baked ham (made by MIL - I'll share the recipe soon!).

Parents chatting to parents-in-law

And to us :)

MIL then tried on my new jackets, leather (from Nik) and faux fur (from David) and decided to try out the Olive Dragonfly pose (showing the fur one to FIL in the kitchen and Nik lurking in both pictures!)  ;)

Then everyone had to go :(  We had such a lovely couple of days and I already can't wait until next year!