Last weekend I set about the task of organising a Christmas tree. Traditionally we get the Christmas tree (or trees) up around the time primary school finishes - sometimes a little earlier. I have tried to delay it until after Jon's birthday on the 19th of December to try and separate the two events but he kind of likes being a Christmas baby.Of course the fact that here he finished school on the 4th December meant the nagging started early this year! There's not a lot of room in our apartment so we went for a small six foot tree and as most of our decorations were (a) still in storage and (b) scaled for our 11 foot trees in New Zealand we spent up large at the $2 shop on small decorations, with a few additions from Oxfam and David Jones.
Then after much convolution the last of shipment was finally moved to storage close by where we have 24/7 access so we were able to get the boxes of Christmas decorations. While the main thing I wanted out of the boxes were the nativity sets I unwrapped everything (still looking for those remotes!) So many memories of children choosing in the Kirkcaldies Christmas shop each year and gifts from family and friends. I kept out a few but had to keep reminding myself that next year we'll have more space, and be able to hang them all again. In the meantime Jon was pretty excited to finally get a Christmas train to go around the tree!
As for the tea towels - last weekend Nick was back in New Zealand in the far North for his uncle's funeral. They stopped in at the Stone Store in Kerikeri and he bought me these seriously cool tea towels. They are a little bit retro and very NZ - he even had them go out the back and find a kea one. Now while gifts of tea towels always remind me of a hysterically funny conversation about gifts from mothers in law at a morning tea in Pukekura Park for my friend Teresa's birthday (was it 29 or 30? - too close to 20 years ago for comfort); in this instance I was heart warmed that he had recognised something I would like in the middle of a difficult time and had even gone to the extra effort to get a specific version. He's not a spontaneous gift giver by nature and while he was pleased he got it SO right - now he is worried about how to match it for Christmas!