Competition closes tonight…
…so tomorrow morning we will be reading all December posts to choose the best one to win a personalised Love Sanat letter.
Don’t be shy – this is the time to share your story and preserve it forever.
Not sure how to enter? This post explains how to enter and the terms of the compeition – Good luck!
A Christmas Letter
Dear friends
With Christmas almost upon us, I’d like to extend my heartfelt appreciation to all of you who have taken the time and trouble to send me “forwards” over the past 12 months. Thank you for making me feel safe, secure, blessed and healthy.
Extra thanks to whoever sent me the email about rat crap in the glue on envelopes – cause I now have to go get a wet towel every time I need to seal an envelope.
Also, I scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason.
Because of your genuine concern, I no longer drink Coca Cola because I know it can remove toilet stains, which is not exactly an appealing characteristic.
I no longer check the coin return on pay phones or anything anymore because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS.
I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day.
I no longer go to shopping centres because someone might drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.
I no longer eat KFC because their “chickens” are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers.
I no longer worry about my soul because at last count, I have 363,214 angels looking out for me.
Thanks to you all, I have learned that God only answers my prayers if I forward an email to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes.
I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl on the internet who is about to die in the hospital (for the 1,387,258th time).
I no longer have any money at all in fact – but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special on-line email program.
Yes, I want to thank you all so much for looking out for me that I will now return the favour!
If you don’t send this e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 7 minutes, a large mutant pigeon with a wicked case of diarrhoea will land on your head at 5:00PM (EST) this afternoon. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbor’s ex-mother-in-law’s second husband’s cousin’s beautician.
Merry Christmas to all,
Love Santa
Santa’s Reindeer names
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house no one could remember the names of Santa’s reindeer 🙂
In the original poem about St Nick (Santa) in his sleigh pulled by reindeer, there were eight reindeer names. After that, the story of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer became known as well. Thus Santa is known for having 9 magical reindeer puling his sleigh.
Santa’s reindeer names
For anyone else trying to remember Santa’s reindeer names to tell the kids or win Trivial Pursuit here they are:
- Prancer
- Dancer
- Donner
- Blitzen
- Dasher
- Vixen
- Comet
- Cupid
- and, of course, Rudolph
Many other reindeer…
But I also heard that it would take more than 214,000 reindeer to pull a sleigh of 333,333 tons (based on one soft toy per child I think it was). Now, there is no way I’m going to list out 214,000 reindeer names, even if I had a hope of knowing them all!
Arrange to delight your children NOW!
Of course, whoever did those calculations didn’t factor in the magic of Santa or the white boomers so the 9 names above are enough for me!
I’m looking forward to my children reading Santa letters soon! They loved last year’s, and even my husband liked them (and he’s not keen on Santa at all)!
Travelling across Australia
When I was 16, I spent my first Christmas away from my family (we did presents and stuff a few days early instead). Along with about 12 others from my scout district, I headed off to Perth for a Venture (this is a huge camp for Venturers, like a scout Jamboree. People travelled from across Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and more to attend, and we had a ball.)
We left on Christmas Eve, packed into two vehicles (a people mover and a 4 wheel drive). Christmas night we were in a place called Ceduna for our Christmas feast. To be honest, I don’t remember what we ate but we laughed a lot as we ate and I do remember what we drank. Our district leader wanted to give us a treat so bought us a bottle of sparkling wine; he also wanted to conserve our collective funds so he purchased some cheap Spumante. And spew-mante is definitely what we called it…
Over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, we covered some 2890 km (from Melbourne to Norseman) and viewed some of the diversity of Australia – metropolitan Melbourne and Adelaide, rural Victoria, the Great Australian Bite and part of the Nullarbor Plain.
It was a very different Christmas for me – rough, no presents, sitting in a car for most of it – but I wouldn’t change it for the world as I saw so much of Australia and had a great time with friends.
In fact, now that I have thought about that trip again, I think we will have a travelling Christmas soon – probably next year.
A hanging Christmas tree
We had our break up at the scout hall last night – Santa came, we played games, we ate food and we had lots of fun. Some kids even got badges and awards.
The hall was decorated with paper chains, balloons and pictures of Santa. Best of all was a tall Christmas tree near one corner, with a basket of presents from Santa. But the tree didn’t touch the ground!
The tree was hung from the roof on a rope so it swings – can’t knock it over that way I guess, and it does get a few knocks with 60 or so kids running around. I don’t know how’s its made – its sort of spirally and then has decorations hanging on it. I think its pretty old, too.
Oh, and thanks for my present Santa!
Individual Christmas cakes
Every year, my Mum would do something special for those around us – school teachers, guide leaders, postman, etc – and one year she made individual Christmas cakes.
She bought Christmas cakes from the supermarket, those square fruit cakes, and cut them into quarters to make 4 cakes. She put each cake on a piece of strong cardboard covered in foil. We then iced them with Royal icing (the white icing on wedding cakes). On some of them we decorated the icing with icing tools to put patterns around the top.
She then got us to roll out the scraps of icing and cut out holly leaves with mini cutters. These we painted green with food colouring. We also made little balls to be holly berries and painted these red.
We decorated the tops of the cakes with the holly berries and leaves and Mum piped “Merry Christmas” on the top in white icing. We then painted the letters with gold.
To complete the gifts, we wrapped them in clear cellophane tied up with red and green curling ribbon.
They looked fantastic and were well received by everyone.
All I want for Christmas…
My nearly 6 year old son lost his 2 front teeth a couple of weeks ago. His grandparents, uncles & aunts and parents have been singing “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth“, driving him crazy!
This morning, he lost a third front tooth, so we’ve had to rewrite the song a bit…
He is well & truly sick of that song now, but we are still enjoying singing it to him.
His new teeth are now growing, and while they may not be fully grown by Christmas, they won’t be far off.
An Aussie Christmas
I think my childhood Christmases were pretty Australian.
We spent the day at my Uncle’s house every Christmas. They lived right on the beach so in between food and presents, we’d spend the day on the beach – mostly I remember playing cricket for hours on end.
It was hot, sunny and great fun!
Regardless, we had the traditional roast meal – lamb, pork and turkey I think were there most years, with loads of veggies, followed by Christmas pudding and custard and/or cream.
Present time was a bit mad, but it was controlled enough that we all watched what everyone got before the next presents were handed out – made it more fun to prolong the pleasure and enjoy everyone’s happiness at their gifts.
The day was loud and seemed to last forever, and we hated going home afterwards.
Win a personalised letter
Love Santa personalised letters are a special way to brighten someone’s Christmas. And you could win a Love Santa letter just by contributing a story or tradition in our blog – but there are only 4.5 days left as the competition will close on December 15 (at midnight Melbourne time)
Full details of the competition and how to share your story (the quick version is click on ‘register’ in the left menu) are on the Sharing your story page.
12 Days of Christmas corporate memo
I came across this today, and thought it was good for a laugh. This is the corporate memo regarding the 12 days of Christmas – http://www.dezert-rose.com/humor/christmas/officememo2.html
Tiny Christmas puddings
I saw those individual puddings a number of times – they look so impressive and taste yum too.
I didn’t have time to find a cake recipe and cook it up so I found a different way to make them 🙂
So, buy a lovely moist fruit cake.
Cut it into small pieces (like about 2cm by 2cm) – make them round if you have a circle cutter. If you have a little more time, roll the pieces between your fingers to make little balls of cake.
Mix some yoghurt with icing sugar. Dob some of this mix on top of each cake piece.
Chop up some glace cherries or ginger. Add a piece or three on top of each pudding.
Let it set then serve for Santa, unexpected guests or even wrap as Christmas gifts. And you can still call them home made 🙂
Paper chains for Christmas
Did anyone else make paper chains for Christmas?
We made them at school every year during Primary school, plus I attempted making some at home. At home, I cut my own paper strips and I never did get the cutting quite straight! The home made ones were a bit boring, too, as we never had coloured paper and my attempts to colour them with pencils were a bit faint and dismal.
Paper chains – cheap and easy to make for instant colour in a room for Christmas!
Our classrooms were always decked in paper chains. Then, I always looked back on the lower year’s room and wondered why the kids made chains instead of using the ones we had made (never occurred to me that the year above me probably had done some too!) I also wanted to know where they stored them all…
No more paper chains?
I don’t think my kids have ever made paper chains anywhere but at home. They don’t do them at school or childcare, or even at Joeys (the craft hub of our lives right now.) I wonder why?
Maybe they try to make things so each child gets one to take home, and maybe they prefer things that last better than paper chains so they can be stored and used for Christmas after Christmas. All very reasonable but paper chains were a fun part of Christmas each year!
Might have to start cutting some strips for this weekend – but I’ll use a cutter instead of scissors this time!
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