Monday, December 26, 2011

Christmas in the Cotswolds

So, I didn’t want to write this because I was worried that I’d forget all the cool details so I put it off longer and longer and that was just silly.

We arrived to much, much, much excitement to our house in the Cotswolds. It’s overcast a lot so it’s hard to appreciate long distance beauty, but the main beauty lies within staying in the one place for 4 nights and overlooking a lake. Our house is huge, comfortable and very homely!

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Food shopping took hours – it was so busy. We had a list that we stuck to. I had to go back in for alcohol because one 3/5 of us had ID on us to buy it in the first checkout run. That was a bit annoying. But easy to remedy. And the girls went and sourced the coolest little Christmas tree.

Roast pork and stir fry was on the menu for dinner, which was absolutely delicious!!!!! Lots of talking and laughing too.

Yesterday I cooked all day. Potato bake, pancakes, and I can’t even remember the rest but it was a lot! The boys (my friends) arrived at around 3pm and we had a few drinks, ate our delicious spaghetti bolognaise, wrapped and organised presents, played board games, drank some more…….. Ebony make gingerbread men. The two resident white swans came knocking (literally) on our front door for a good hour or so. They’re so pretty! But also a little bit scary.

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And then it was Christmas!

I was up early chopping and dicing breakfast goods. I’d snuck another couple of presents under the tree for Tegan and Ebony, and went through the stocking that mum organised for us. Pancakes, bacon, eggs, fried leeks, mushrooms, tomatoes and eggs benedict on the menu. It was a pretty freaking good breakfast.

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Then it was present time. It was a lot of fun! We’d set up secret santa and there were some other random gifts as well. I opened my purple Doc Martens that I bought for myself (which I wore all day). Some other cool things including a leather bracelet that Pop made, a lamb to help a family from Nan, some of the cutest little sewing things from my secret santa……. The girls loved their Kindle (ebony) and iPod (tegan) that I got them. It was a bit naughty to spend that much, but I thought – well, I didn’t really think, I just did it. There were lots of fun other presents for everyone too.

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Ebony and I had organised a lucky dip of mini alcohol bottles we’d bought from Germany of undisclosed nature. All different so we had no idea how they tasted. There was one spare and Tegan took it before she knew she had to drink it all. We all cheers’d and then drank our shot together.

It was pass the parcel now, that Ebony and I had also organised with a bunch of little (but great) presents we’d picked up along the way.

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Then turkey preparation. Oh man. We had no idea. We tried to stuff the neck with stuffing but it wouldn’t fit. Turns out it’s a lot easier to stuff a turkey bum with stuffing. Ebony took some freaking hilarious photos of us trying to figure it all out! We got it in the oven and it cooked for a good 3 hours (which was too much. oops). While it was baking, we were drinking and talking and dancing around to Christmas music, playing with the swans outside, eating more, drinking more, laughing more. It was really really cool!

We played bingo as well with the contents of a massive bingo Christmas bon bon. And then it was time to eat the turkey! We ate breakfast at about 10:30am and lunch at about 4:30pm. Dessert at about 8pm.

The dinner spread was pretty amazing! Check it out:

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Dinner lasted a while because we tried to fit in as much as possibly possible!

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More board games, more laughing, more singing and dancing, more drinking…. a bit of cleaning up…. And now it’s midnight, I’m exhausted but still buzzing. I’m not drunk because I started drinking at breakfast and stopped at dinner. Everyone’s sober and civil and in bed. I feel a bit dodgy about that but I shouldn’t. We had the best, more amazing beautiful day. We drank and ate a lot, laughed a lot and now we’re going to bed to sleep well, so we can do it all again tomorrow!

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Merry Christmas!!!

XOXOXOXOXOOXX

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