A week from today and it is Christmas. I finished wrapping gifts. Cards were sent out two weeks ago. Now I am remembering other Christmases with friends and family I will miss this year and wait for company to come and fill the spaces left behind.
A neighbor hangs these balls along the road each year. It is a lovely bit of unexpected cheer and we love it when one gets overlooked when they take them down and is left to remind us of the holidays all year long.
Our dinner for Christmas is all settled, ham, roasted sweet potato wedges, buttermilk biscuits, amazing kale salad, more vegetables followed by a presumably delicious dessert. Appetizers and festive drinks before we settle into full plates and even fuller conversations. It is a good grouping of family and friends old and new. I like mixing them up around the table so we aren’t sitting near someone we eat with daily.
There will be twelve of us which is smaller than usual so the menu is less complicated than before. I don’t think we eat as much food as we used to and that is a good thing.
What I also like is that we begin at four in the afternoon and easily finish by eight o’clock. We have caught up with each other and cleaned up by then. The only thing left is to put my feet up with a very chilled Stones Ginger Wine, talk about how well it all went and start thinking about what to do next year.
After Christmas I will post pictures of some of the gifts I made but for now they are to be a surprise.
Happy Holidays.