It's Christmas!

After returning from Boston for Thanksgiving, I got into full Christmas mode, including organising a tree trimming party for this past weekend and going ice skating twice in the past week. I went to the Somerset House rink in Central London with my friend Kylie and a few others on Tuesday night. The outdoor rink is in the courtyard of the Somerset House and it's a beautiful setting.

And I went again on Saturday night with a group of friends to celebrate a birthday. As a nice surprise, Katie was visiting me for the weekend and came along! This rink was at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. Afterwards, we all went out for a meal of Spanish Tapas and wine, and then a few of us headed back to my place for rounds of Bailey's until nearly 3am.

Overall the weekend was very fun, but also very busy. Friday night I went to Sainsbury's twice for two large shopping trips, first to get the food for the party on Sunday and second to get more wine and our Christmas tree! Janice and I carried it home with us on the bus. Very classy. It's only about 4 feet high and not really that heavy, so it's wasn't too difficult, but still very amusing. We also went to Ikea on Friday night to stock the kitchen with bits and pieces it was lacking as well as purchase most of the Christmas ornaments.

On Sunday, Katie and I went to All Souls Church in Oxford Circus, had Lebanese food for lunch in St. Christopher's Place, and then head home to prep for the party. We had 8 people over and we served apple slices/pumpkin dip, spinach/artichoke dip, beef stew, pecan tart and mince pies with Irish double cream. Mmmmm. Oh yeah, and lots of mulled wine and port!

We also decorated the tree, including making several ornaments out of a set designed for children. There were these felt cutouts of animal shapes and then all sort of stickers and googly eyes, glitter, etc to put on them. I don't have any good pictures of the tree yet, but will post one on smugmug once it's done being adorned.

Everyone head home at a reasonable time since it was a Sunday night, and to top off the weekend, I just booked a last minute ticket to Paris for this coming weekend! Katie will be there for work and she is staying the weekend by herself, so I am going to join her. How fun! This is my 5th Paris trip this year, with another one lined up for late January. I'm starting to think I should just block book weekend trips there in advance for once a month or something!