Design Dilemmas
Episode 40: Festive planning without spending lots of money, from Christmas decorating through to canape coordination and some excellent ideas for wrapping your gifts.
I love Christmas. It truly is my favourite time of year, mostly because it’s one of the few times that the family all get together in one place. Not for long, obvs (we have a three day limit on any sort of family gathering, the maximum time we can spend as a unit before someone commits an act of murder) but it’s always so good to be together, albeit often in far too small a space and with far too much Cava than is acceptable for such a short period of time. We have several family traditions, one of which is that Joe always BBQ’s the turkey. Yes, even in Yorkshire where it’s baltic from October onward. This stems from a Kerman family tradition (my side) when we lived in Hong Kong and my dad, an extremely keen BBQer, used to whip out the Weber kettle, wrap the turkey in several layers of silver foil and roast it on our balcony, twenty two floors up overlooking Lamma Island. Continuing this tradition is the only domestic culinary role that Joe undertakes all year and he takes it very seriously, standing outside whatever the weather, flourishing tongs in hand, calling for regular top ups of G&T. Anyone would think that he was Jesus feeding the five thousand. However, he does do a good job. Not only does it always taste delicious (you can’t beat that smoky BBQ taste) but it also frees up the oven for all other cooking situations. Sorted.
When it comes to decorations, I’m onit like a car bonnet from the last week of November. I keep my boxes well sealed in the cellar, each one neatly packaged and ready to go. I’ve learned my lesson with this one. Years ago when we lived in Caversham, due to lack of in house storage, we stacked the Christmas decorations in the shed, a chilly space at the end of the garden. December arrived and the children rushed to drag them in, opening the boxes and throwing decorations with abandon across the living room. Unfortunately, the boxes had not been residing alone in the shed for the last twelve months. Several families - in fact, at least five generations - of spiders had been residing there too. In the boxes. It took a while to realise that the decorations were covered in hundreds of black spiders and once we did, the screams could be heard as far as, if not further than, Henley On Thames. Since this day of hell, duct tape has been my friend and even Houdini wouldn’t be able to get out of my Christmas boxes.
It has to be said that Christmas can be a budget stretching time, however hard we try to minimise the expense. Every year I swear I will keep to a budget; every year I announce that I am done and won’t be visiting the supermarket again, only to return on Christmas Eve in blind panic that I don’t have enough tubs of Quality Street or biscuits for cheese multipacks. In addition, we are all working hard to shop carefully, to shop with intent instead of chucking everything within sight into our basket, whether it be online or in store. Ways in which we can limit both expenditure and waste but still feel like we are nailing it style wise are at the forefront of our thoughts. So with this in mind, I’ve pulled together my top tips for making your Christmas sustainable whilst keeping it stylish, sleek and most importantly, super cool.
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