Christmas preparation on the farm

If the OH had his way, Christmas wouldn’t exist.  To him it’s too much effort, and being on the farm, he still needs to work over Christmas.  The animals still need feeding although he does try and get as much work done early in the morning so he can get back in plenty of time to visit the nephews and niece to do present drop offs.

December is definitely when we start thinking about Christmas preparation, aided by the advent calendar countdown.

Christmas decorations

I love to buy a new bauble (or 2) each year, and this year found some gorgeous little glass ones, that look stunning on the tree with the lights.  Shame I managed to break one of them by dropping it when I was pulling the tag off.  After I’d been telling N to be careful with the baubles if he was helping me decorate the tree, he then told me

‘It wasn’t me mummy.  You said to be careful’.  Oops, reprimanded by a 4 year old.

We love putting the tree up and this year we were earlier than normal.  It’s usually the weekend before, but I decided to put it up 2 weekends before which means we enjoy it for longer, and it feels a bit more Christmassy.  The time seems to whizz by quicker as well the nearer you get to Christmas, so I’m happy to try and stretch out the feel good feeling for longer.

N helped carry some of the baubles down from upstairs.  He unpacked the tree from its tree bag (so much better than the old tatty box it came in), and then insisted on putting the branches in while I spread them all out.  Because ‘it’s too hard for me to do that bit.  But don’t go too fast’.

It’s a lovely thing for the 2 of us to do together.  We put on a Christmas cd, and sang along while I instructed N on where the baubles should go.

He’s very helpful at untangling beaded garlands too, although he did manage to get the lights more tangled than I’m sure they were put into the box.

I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to decorations.  Decorations are 2 colours only (well, purple, silver and clear), and are suitable placed starting large, and moving smaller before filling in the gaps and depth with any other large plain baubles.  I still ended up with masses left over – cheaper ones I bought years ago for fillers before building up our single bauble collection.  N is very good because he will place them where I tell him, although in the end he was happy enough just putting them round the back of the tree so I let him do what he wanted there.

Now I just have to stop him from playing with the lights.  He’s discovered that there’s a button to make the lights flash and fade.

O Christmas Tree

We have an artificial Christmas tree.  As a child we did have a real tree for a while.  It was brought back in from the garden each year, and planted back out, until my mum realised she got urticaria from it, and bought a fancy artificial tree instead.  So an artifical one does the job for me – saves me going out to choose one, bring it home, water it, keep it away from heating – hard to do when it’s in our living room in between wood burner and radiator.

I also like the consistency of our tree.  Each year I know it’ll look the same, it’ll fit in the space we have and it’s easy to decorate.  Last year I wanted to upgrade to a 7 ft one in the sales, but so many of the Christmas trees now are prelit – I don’t want a prelit one because I have my own gorgeous lights I want to use.  So the search will be on for this year’s sales.

It is a bit embarrassing though.  One of the nephews sells real Christmas trees each year for extra pocket money.  The OH thinks we should have one from him, but he don’t do non-drop ones, and I’d be the one having to vacuum permanently.

N announced he was getting one from his cousin though, so I said he could have a small one for the back room/playroom to put all the odds and sods baubles on if there was a small one left.  Thankfully there’s been nothing more said about it though so I’m off the hook.

Turkeys

As well as Christmas trees, we also have a few turkeys on the farm for sale.  Last weekend was plucking weekend, when they’d all be killed, plucked and hung up, before being made ready for being boxed and collected.

A couple of friends come over to help the men pluck, and they work all day in one of the boxes, surrounded by flying white feathers.  N wanted to go and see what they were doing again, so they found him a chair, sat him down and he watched what they were doing.

I’m surprised he didn’t traipse feathers back into the house later because his uncle had shoved feathers down his back, and then one of the men had filled his wellies with feathers as well.  All good fun, and he was learning…although probably some bad language as well!

I can’t wait to have our turkey on Christmas day.  The OH told me it was a 26lber, but I hope not given there’s only 3 of us eating!  I guess we just get what’s left after all the people who’ve ordered specific sizes have had theirs.

Christmas cards

All of our Christmas cards have been written, posted or handed out.

N got very excited about the little post boxes in school – each class has one so they post any cards into the right class’ box.  Every day N comes home with some more cards in his book bag.  He loves opening them and trying to read the name of who it’s from…although he’s getting stuck on ‘it begins with ‘l’ mummy?’.  That’ll be ‘love XXX’.

I was really impressed that he wrote his name in all the cards he sent – I think there were 28 of them.  He’s got the longest name by far out of his class (well, 1 more letter than his best friend’s), so it was hard work but he did it.  I hope he feels pleased that he wrote them himself too.  Although maybe next year he’ll be happy to write the whole card and not just his name.

Presents

I’ve only got a couple more presents to buy – an additional gift for the OH, something for the in laws, and then to bake (I’m planning Christmas biscotti) for the family.  I’ve also got 3 birthdays to buy for straight after Christmas as well, so it’s a bit mad having to think of those too.

Are you all set for Christmas?  What’ve you got left to do?