Sun in bare forsythia canes, on a much colder morning, now that all the rain has blown through.
Our Lady of the waiting winter garden.
At this writing, I am finished with all but one of my major gift projects, which feels miraculous. I still need to gather a few more stocking stuffers –– fortunately I've assigned everyone to bring one small stocking stuffer for everyone else, so that task isn't all mine, but I do need to have some more things to put in myself.
Still planning menus, too. Typically we do Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas breakfast, and Christmas dinner in the evening, though I also have to feed meals to an increasing number of people starting tomorrow. Here's my plan for the major meals:
Christmas Eve:
*breakfast: ad lib (I should probably get some cereal, which we don't eat but other people do)
*lunch: soup and sandwiches
*pre-dinner: cheese board, baked brie, dates, &c.
*dinner: baked salmon, cheese ravioli, peas, spiced pears, cookies
*maybe some wine or champagne for after Midnight Mass
Christmas Day:
breakfast: sausage and egg casserole, cherry cobbler, gingerbread breakfast cookies OR cinnamon rolls, coffee, orange juice
during the day: charcuterie board (cheeses, baked brie, dates & other dried fruit, salami and other cured meats)
dinner: ham, baked apples with cranberries, roasted brussels sprouts with bacon, roasted carrots, oyster pie, cherry & apple pies, cookies
I still need to nail down dinners for the 23rd, when we will have potentially all nine people here, and for Boxing Day, when again . . . we might have nine, we might have seven . . . people's plans are fluid here. Fortunately after Christmas we should have ham leftovers (seriously thinking about getting a second ham, because it's relatively inexpensive, everyone likes it, and it feeds expanding or contracting numbers of people with ease). And I need to be sure we have easy things to grab for breakfasts and lunches, which are the meals I don't routinely plan and tend to forget about until people are looking at me going, "What are we going to eat now?" I might go ahead and make a double or triple batch of chili for dinner tonight, actually, just to have it on hand later in the week.
Wearing today:
Wet hair, with a repeat of yesterday's Poshmarked Pact grape cotton sheath dress worn as a jumper over a Patagonia base-layer merino shirt. I'd gotten this shirt on Poshmark, thinking to give it as a gift (giving a lot of Poshmarked merino to the men in my orbit this Christmas), but while it's in good used condition, it's a little more obviously used than some of the other items I've ordered, with a little snagging and pilling, so I decided to keep it for myself. I'd been wanting a base-layer merino shirt, and I know I'll wear this navy a lot. It is definitely meant to be a base layer, so is thinner than your average tee/pullover, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's less see-through than I had expected. I could actually wear it on its own. I like the navy with the grape dress, and the merino, fine-gauge as it is, provides a lot of warmth underneath on a day when that's very welcome.
Not the world's most flattering angle here, but it's easier to see my gray merino Snag tights and Birks in this shot. So basically I have heavy organic cotton over an entire base layer of merino, top and bottom.
Anyway, I hadn't planned to buy anything for myself, but lucky me. As we're heading into the last days of 2021, I am mindful of my resolution to make 2022 a no-buy year. While I'm not exactly scrambling to buy a bunch of stuff –– in fact, I've been culling my closet pretty hard lately –– I am certainly thinking, in these waning moments of the year, of what I might honestly need to make a no-buy year sustainable and successful.
But there'll be time to think about that after Christmas. I have contemplated possibly buying one more Wool& dress as a Christmas gift to myself (sometime during the Twelve Days), and letting go more of my non-natural-fiber thrifted dresses . . . we shall see. For now, I really want to concentrate on gift-giving and hospitality, which is the serious work of this last week in Advent.