IN PREPARATION

Eeep it's almost Christmas!  I get so excited every year, but now with Ayana to make Christmas magical for it's almost too much to bare!  Of course it's always a little bit of a strange one to celebrate here in the middle of summer (not that you know it the way the weather has been lately) and I'm always trying to come up with new ways to incorporate the beach, warm weather and nature into our decorating.  This year Ayana and I picked up some beautiful driftwood from the beach, dead Manuka branches from the paddock and some cute little pinecones... then we attacked them with gold paint!  I'm still trying to figure out how to actually display our quirky decorations but in general I like how they turned out.  Ayana has also been very busy painting Christmas cards for everybody.  She starts with a paint brush but before long it gets tossed aside in favour of fingers (and sometimes a whole forearm).  I can't really talk though, I've been walking around with golden fingers all week (humming Gold Finger to myself).

The other thing we started doing was baking Christmas cookies... or rather helping to bake them.  I'm terrible at baking and therefore don't particularly enjoy it, but this has been a surprising amount of fun!  Ayana has now become addicted to cookie dough and it was so cute to watch her helping out.  Now we just have to wait a whole week before we're allowed to eat them, torture!

 Anyway Christmas is going to be a bit of a hectic affair this year but I'm looking forward to experiences another 'Kiwi' Christmas.  Usually we just celebrate it German style which is actually quite a bit different.
xx