Christmas is looming...

 I just can't get into the Christmas swing this year.  I haven't bought one gift yet.  My girls usually prefer money now plus a few stocking stuffers that I get them.  Gus is a hard one, I never know what to get him.  There are a few rellies to buy for too.  I have a Christmas Club account that has a good balance in it so that takes the stress off a bit.

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Living in a small country town makes it difficult to do spontaneous Christmas shopping.  We have no Myer, David Jones, Westfield Shopping centres.  I work every day and our regional centre is 50kms away.  Even there, there is only Target, K-Mart and BigW.  We do have a few gift shops in our town but you can't always find what you want.

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This year  we (the four of us) are going to Melbourne for our Christmas so I will not be with my side of the family for lunch.  This will be strange as I have always done that but this is year it's Gus' turn.  His elderly auntie and his mum are staying in Melbourne and his brother and sister-in-law are going as well so we will join them for lunch at a fancy hotel.  Lunch will be awesome with all the trimmings and No Washing Up or headaches over preparation! Score!

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One thing I have decided to do is make the Christmas pudding for all my sisters to enjoy.  I've been making it for the past couple of years with my Mum but she is no longer able to help as she has Alzheimers disease.  So the fruit (above) has been plumped with 1/2 a cup of brandy and I may make the pudding this weekend.

Christmas Day without that pudding, brandy custard and cream would not be right.

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One thing we will be doing, is going to the Boxing Day
Test to watch Australia v India...

We did this one other year in 2008.  That year we had lunch with my family then drove over to Melbourne in the afternoon so we were there for the Test on Boxing Day.

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Logistically, we will have to take some food to have on Christmas night as no shops/restaurants will be open.  Probably just some cold meats and salads that we can take in eskies and nibbles.  From then on we have all the restaurants in Melbourne at our mercy over the coming days!

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 Of course, Kirby wants to do some shopping on the Saturday morning!

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Of course, I will do my usual Christmas baking of biscuits and goodies.  I just bought a totally unneccessary lovely new book called Sweet Things....

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Look at this yummy Chocolate Salami - its definitely on my to do list!  There are lots of toffee, fudge, caramels, marshmallow goodies in the book so I will be trying some of those too.

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What are you doing for Christmas?  Big family do or just a small soiree??  

Are you in a bit of a Christmas funk?

Cheers - Joolz