Christmas Day hits and misses

[RosieLeaLovesTea]

a surprising hit- we got a funny jelly bean roulette game where you spin the spinner and you don’t know if you will get a good or horrible flavour. The kids loved it and it cost about £2.

The turkey was a hit - cooked at 120 for 7 hours- just a half crown- came out lovely and moist.

my son said it was the best Christmas Day he has had -he is 9- said he loved the turkey. Mainly very happy with his small presents.

the wine - I bought some nice sparkling wine from a local vineyard and it was very nice.

we watched home alone - Home alone 1 and 2, and Bridget Jones. Plus the snowman.

come and tell us what was a hit and what was a miss.

My SIL had a lovely little game a bit like pass the parcel .called the Right Left game .Had wrapped some small gifts .Our nephews thought it was great .And I won a prize!(Completely free to download )

Hits:
-Not going overboard on puddings...we had Christmas pud plus a lovely alternative (sort of frozen Eton Mess) and then instead of panicking and making a bastard roulade on Christmas Eve I melted some chocolate, crushed some biscuits and made a sort of tiffin scenario. Served it chopped into small squares with coffee and it was just right.
-Freezing cauli cheese, bread sauce (although I made too much) and stuffing balls.
-Framed band poster for my son - bought the digital file very cheaply and printed it at the local library, B&M frame and Bob's your uncle.

Misses:
-Lidl pigs in blankets - horrible and salty.
-JL crackers - expensive but rubbish!

Telestrations game was a multi generational hit and my 6/9 yo DN/DNW could not wait to get it out on boxing day. It kept us all at the table until after 10!

For my two toddlers a couple of little torches and light up bath ducks have been a hit. The leap frog ice cream cart and tonie box too.

Hits
Fantastic sirloin and gammon from our local butcher, we just finished them both off today.
M&S pigs in blankets and stuffing balls. Snowdonia cheeses (black bomber and Red Devil). Aldi champagne .

Miss
my bread machine which packed in on Christmas Eve night!! 🙄

The surprise hit was the the basic white t-shirts I got my daughter along with much longed-for fabric markers. She has ditched the fabric markers and spent hours with a biro drawing on the t-shirts. 10 year olds are the most surprising people 😅

Misses:

Veggie main course. Took fucking hours snd tasted absolutely revolting. Thanks for nothing Jamie Oliver.
I didn’t forget Yorkshires but decided not to do them and missed them.
I made beautiful decorations for each person and forgot to give them out. Will post them.
I broke a gift for someone so had to do some swapping around and DH didn’t get something he’d have loved but I’ll try and find a replacement.

Hits:

All the gifts, especially stockings. Best gift was a fabric dart board and Velcro balls I got for one DC off vinted for £3. Absolute winner and everyone ended up playing it.
Starters were a huge success.
Roast potatoes, almost overdone but DH got there just in time and they were amazing.
Cheese - Aldi posh selection plus a few extras, excellent value.
Christmas Eve books, DD asked if we could open them in the morning and everyone loved theirs and they all got read and enjoyed.
Crib service on Christmas Eve instead of Carol service.

Hits:
Lunch - then bubble and squeak and poached egg for breakfast.

A little square photo album meant for Instax pictures, made by Hama. In the back of it there is a wallet section to keep tickets in and so on.
Thermal black tights with fleecy velvet skin colour layer (2nd pair).
Seeing a kingfisher belt through the arch of a bridge in sunshine (from above).
Buying 4 Asian pears and them all being really delicious.

Misses:
Not buying any chocolates.
Not being allowed to sing harmonies to carols as DD can't stand it.

The M & S chateaubriand (Boxing Day) was "insane" according to my teenage son. We also had an M & S stuffed duck on Christmas day. We got quite large discounts on them on the Ocado order, so I thought, well, we might as well.

My daughter is very pleased with her new headphones and crochet kits from amazon.

Hits - all the food was lovely - no disasters there.
Also everyone was pleased with their gifts.
Miss - I hosted for 12 and found it very stressful, 2 vegetarians meaning I have to do a separate main course, separate stuffing, separate Gravy, I didn’t have enough oven space so I was juggling the whole time. It did turn out ok but it was too stressful including the run up to it and all the prep beforehand. I’m not doing it again, in fact I may offer to work next year!!

Best thing seeing my two grandchildren.
worst thing lack of any alcohol, due to disapproval from others. I bought my own low alcohol wine.

Hits - slowing down Christmas, taking time to enjoy it - rather than a gift frenzy. Dh cooked the entire Christmas lunch which was delicious, teens tidied and cleaned up! That was new, not having to do anything for the first year in 24 years.

Lego for teens and adults was such a hit - they loved recreating their childhood with a cool gift.

Having extended family over the weekend before really took the pressure off, and we enjoyed two Christmases when the ‘magic of Christmas’ had not worn thin, as it often does post Christmas.

Miss - couldn’t host friends this year due to illness earlier in the month, and I missed it! Will organise many more for next year

Will write it out for you when I get home..I'm away enjoying my surprise weekend away.

Thanks. Have a lovely time.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful when I say this, but three relatives bought our five month old baby a new Christmas outfit as a Christmas present. Not really anticipating this, my boyfriend and I had already bought him two cute festive outfits to wear on the day. So in the morning, when we opened these three new outfits, I just felt bad as I knew he wasn’t going to wear them. It felt really wasteful! They’ll go to a charity shop, but I just feel bad that our relatives bought outfits he’ll never wear. Well, I say never, he did wear one of them on Boxing Day, but now it feels silly putting him in them now Christmas is done. I mean I could do over the next couple of days, but it feels very “for the sake of it.” We don’t expect gifts, but if they wanted to buy him clothes, their money would’ve been better spent buying him something non themed that he will get more use out of!

Hits - the turkey from our local farm shop, which is always lovely. Homemade cranberry sauce - don’t usually bother, but SO much nicer than shop bought.
Misses - found the pigs in blankets in the fridge just as we were serving up.

Hits:

• Speed Track toy has provided hours of entertainment and is easy enough to use that 3yo DS doesn't need loads of help
• Crinkly Caterpillar toy for 3mo DD who attacks it like a cat with catnip
• Box of fancy biscuits

Misses:

• Made the Mary Berry Yule log. There is more icing than cake and no-one has wanted a second piece. Offered some to DS who is a chocolate fiend and he chose smoothie instead!

The surprise hit here was a hover football, the kids have used boxes to make makeshift goals everywhere. Also got each of them a eugy kit to make of their favourite animal as a stocking filler, absolute silence while they constructed them, twas bliss (for about 20 minutes).
The only miss was the pigs in blankets from Sainsbury's, so over salty nobody would eat them.

I had a really lovely Xmas this year. For a change all the bits of the Xmas dinner were cooked to end at the same time. My adult DS helped me get all food into heated serving trays to keep it hot and he carved the turkey crown and pork as DH is vegetarian and he won't do it. Foster son with learning disability, who is having his first Xmas with us, was thrilled with all his presents both from us and his stocking (sack). Adult DS helped him make an Aston Villa bus (like half sized Lego). He's 17 and said it was the best Xmas he's ever had and it made me a bit tearful because every child should have a lovely Xmas. Today we are at MiL's and she has also made him a Xmas stocking he doesn't know about. We will open after lunch. He will be happy because I know she found him some football colouring which he loves to do. No misses at all this year except eldest adult DS has nasty heavy cold.

m&s stuffing. not a fancy one but sage and onion packet that you mix - was absolutely delish. the posh ones in the tray were a bit meh!

Oh bless him, I seem to have something in both eyes.
Thankyou to you and all the great foster carers - especially those caring for teens and those with special needs ❤️

Hit: some wonderful Taskmaster crackers that kept us occupied all through the meal and beyond, with silly games to play. The children kept begging us to repeat some of them.

Miss: in hindsight, not a good idea to try out our new air fryer on Christmas Day. The pigs in blankets ended up incinerated. (Luckily we’d bought double the amount we needed, in a special offer, and frozen the rest so could have them on Boxing Day, safely cooked in usual oven. No doubt we'll get more familiar with the air fryer.)

Hit: Aldi Xmas pudding. Delicious and boozy

a book that 5yo DS had wanted from the library but none of our local libraries had it (second one in the Torla and Smorla series.) We’ve read it twice a day since.

Miss: too much cheese. Always too much cheese. I’m bored of eating it now.

You cooked a half crown for seven hours? I bet it was lovely.
But I didn't think it took that long. We had one of those double breast crown things that serves 8, and we cooked it for two hours. The packet said 1 hr 45. I used to do a whole turkey which did take ages!

My win was fixing my top oven that's been broken for four years. I was leaping up and down with joy!

My loss was the crackers which had the shittest prizes and jokes ever. And the woman in the shop recommended them as the best ones!

Another loss is realising my Bailey's dupe has only 12% alcohol v regular Bailey's at 17. So it's not really that much cheaper?!

Hits

• freeze dried sweets were a hit with all the children
• as were the sticky patches you put in your phone so it has lots of little suction cups (struggling to explain this!)
• DS loved his lighting set for his big Lego model

Misses

• DH meant well but got me "anti wrinkle cream" sheet masks and it just I dont think is ever a gift you should get unless it's requested. It feels like the equivalent of getting spot cream for a teen. I'm not precious about my appearance it just hit the wrong note
• my parents got me several duplicate books they also purchased me the year before. I wish they would keep a note somewhere, books aren't cheap and it feels like such a waste - probably a good £60 of books going straight to the charity shop
• the girls loved their shower gels but the boys seem quite nonplussed. I think to them it's just not something they see as a gift so will avoid in future
• DH bought me three different very expensive shower gels and three different beautiful notebooks. All nice. But that was it and it just felt stupid like get one of each and some other bits.

(Thankfully I buy myself a few gifts each year as I have accepted DH gifts will always leave me feeling let down. I think he just doesn't get that gifts (to me) are meant to be indulgent things you wouldn't buy for yourself as part of day to day shopping)

Oh, another hit was an enormous White Company candle from my mum, I really love it