I spent the night before wrapping a few presents.

I take pride in wrapping presents.. I like to think of them as boxes of happiness! This year, I included bits of candy, Christmas confetti, stickers, and tissue paper into each box.
I used glue instead of tape on the wrapping paper so it looks neater, too.. erm..

Finished result!

The first Christmas card I receive each year is usually from KC, a close friend of mine who lives in Melbourne. He always makes the effort to find out my current address and sends out cards way in advance!

I made eggnog using the Waitrose American Eggnog recipe, with bourbon.

As I’m not exactly the domestic goddess and don’t spend much time in the kitchen (I’m always out >.<) .. I had to go and buy a hand whisk. And god damn it was hard work mixing everything with that primitive, non-electrical object!

The eggnog turned out great 🙂

Just the day before, I was talking to my Portuguese friend Luis, who was telling me how he was celebrating Christmas in Porto. Ok fine, I was asking about what kind of festive food they ate there.. and he mentioned leite creme, which is a Portuguese milk custard not unlike French crème brûlée. Except that it’s meant to be much easier to make.. so I did, using this recipe.

The pic above is of the filling I was preparing for hoddeok, a Korean pancake dessert that I had recently discovered. Recipe here. I used chopped hazelnuts instead of peanuts.

The end result!

I also made a Sweet Potato Casserole with Marshmallows. It’s traditionally a Thanksgiving dish, but I thought it would be great with the Christmas turkey. I used Nigella Lawson’s recipe and it was really fantastic! My favourite part was opening each parcel of baked sweet potato and scooping out the juicy flesh to use for the next step.

All the sweet potato mash is then mixed with lemon juice and cinnamon before being baked in the oven with a layer of marshmallows on top, which melt to form a cover that looks like dinosaur skin.

The last thing on my menu was Nigella’s infamous ‘Chocohotopots‘, which I first had a taste of when Joyce made it last year. They were sooooo good. I prepared the batter and kept it in a container to bake at Linda’s house (where the dinner was being held) so it could be served hot/fresh.

I was really pleased with how the sweet potato casserole came out.. it was so sweet and juicy and went great with the turkey. The portion I made was too much so I got to keep the rest, and oh my it tasted EVEN better after a day or two in the fridge!

The leite creme turned out fab.. I didn’t have a kitchen torch (of course I wouldn’t have).. so it was a bit of a pain trying to caramelise the demerara sugar on top. I had to use the broiler.

The ramekins I got were rather large and so they didn’t fill up completely.. but they were soooo delish with the brandy pouring cream.

Winter candle and decorative xmas stars c/o The White Company. I brought them from home to jazz up Linda’s living room a little. And make it smell nicer. The candle is an infusion of cinnamon, clove, and fresh orange. It makes you want to drink the air.. if you get what I mean.

Linda, Joyce, Me, Su

With Jayna & Neena too

Some of the Christmas presents on the floor.

Linda got me a DIY bubble machine thing.. I haven’t had the time to put it together yet but I’m definitely looking forward to it OF COURSE.

Eggnog was served after all the presents were opened.

The BEST present I got this Christmas came from Jayna. She made a little photo book of our Iceland trip! It was super cool. I miss Iceland.

Other presents I got include Urbanears headphones from Marina (she’s the sweetest), a Betty Boop ashtray, a super cool mood calendar, a knit-your-own-panda-mittens kit, and some yummy things from The Body Shop.

Yes, I know it’s nearly 3 weeks since Christmas! I’ve been so busy with.. life in general I simply didn’t have time to document it. My very close friend from Melbourne is visiting at the moment and we’ve recently just come back from a fantastic trip to Venice. I can’t wait to write about THAT!

x

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I thought this Santa was rather freaky.. (ie My kinda Santa.. haha)

Some sort of haunted house.. I bet it’s not even really scary. Hehe.

Someone in the group chickened out of ice skating in the end because of the condition of the ice that night.. but the rest of us carried on. UNfortunately, the ice wasn’t kept very well by the management and it was completely waterlogged. At some parts of the rink, the water was up to about 4 inches deep!

I skated SO CAREFULLY (ie slowly, like a snail) as I warned myself I would NOT fall on the wet, slobbery ice..

In the end, we only stayed for about 20 minutes at most before giving up and heading for the mulled wine and food instead..

…at the Bavarian Beerhouse. This reminded me of Oktoberfest the year before! Prost!

You could order mulled wine with a shot of rum, bourbon, or ..whiskey (my memory might not be 100% correct here) for something between £4-5.

Reena and I had a few and we ended up dancing up a storm.. or rather.. dancing like morons (what’s new!)

Paul & Steven

Steven used to live with me in Euston/King’s Cross; that’s how we met. We’ve both now escaped.. haha, I say escape because there was a third person in the flat whom we both just didn’t get along with ;p

They also sold 1L beers a la Oktoberfest.. for £9.

I won’t say too much about the rest of the night as it’s rather embarrassing but the conclusion is I HAD A REALLY GREAT TIME!!

Winter Wonderland is open at Hyde Park until 6 January 2013.

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This was my Santa ‘kit’! A sack, hat, wand, various toys and lots of candy to give out to.. civilians on the street.

There were three meeting points (East, South, and Central London) to start with that morning – these were only announced about 24 hours prior and so you gotta keep alert and follow the ‘Santanav’ on Twitter.

The East London troupe began at Shoreditch High Street. The pic above was taken by Jayna, when all the Santas had walked to and descended upon Liverpool Street station.. causing it to.. shut down. -_-
I joined the group at Farringdon (as I was late hehe), and everyone trotted along to St Paul’s.

The whole place was absolutely BUZZING with Christmassy energy! My favourite part was erm.. when I got the opportunity to toss a couple of brussels sprouts into a sea of Santas.. (we’re told not to but everyone was doing it and I simply couldn’t help it *naughty*).

I also met some interesting people!

I looooved this guy’s fur coat. According to him, he has one custom-made by a friend every year for Santacon.

He told me his name was: Bad Ass Santa Pimp Daddy, a.k.a. BASPD.

I followed BASPD around for a bit like a groupie. Later on when I bumped into him again, I noticed he wore a silver chain with a pendant that spelt out ‘I Love Pussy’. Naturally, I pointed it out and laughed.

He ran away and I never saw him again after that.

I contemplated being a Christmas tree when I was deciding on my costume!! But I couldn’t find one that I was convinced would keep me warm. So I opted for.. a Santa Kigurumi (onesie)!

With Reena (sunnies on) and Flo.

Reena’s sack had a whole load of vodka in it. Haha!!

The Santas proceeded to march across Millennium Bridge…

Roger (her new nickname), Flo, Me, Reena.

We had a bit of a Santa band going on.. me dinging my triangle and Reena + Roger a bit too vigorously shaking the maracas.. at one point we spotted some Mexican Santas (they had the hats), ran towards them and went crazy with the maracas! I wish there was a video of that so I can see how crazy we must’ve looked..

Whilst I applauded Flo’s ambitiousness to go all the way with her Santa costume and purchase an inflatable belly.. I have to say.. I mean. She looked like a deformed alien baby was bursting out of her!! LOL. You gotta hand it to her though.. she wore that thing for a number of hours..

Party Santas and their music! Everyone was loitering outside the Tate, dancing, jumping around, singing, handing out presents. Poor kids. I think every child that walked past was chased down by a few Santas each time because we were all over-eager to give out our candy :p

Tate Modern Takeover

Santa decided to visit the museum.

It was SO MAD!!! All of a sudden the whole concourse was FILLED with red and so much noise – to the bewilderment of tourists and visitors inside.

You know what’s freakin awesome?? Manon, a Belgian girl whom I’ve known through her blog for a couple of years now, took this photo above. She happened to be at the museum and was snapping photos of the sudden influx of Santas. She then went home and was editing pics for her blog when she noticed that *I* was in it!

The guy on the left was hilarious.. he brought an analog telephone receiver and I saw him speaking into it.. goodness knows what nonsense he was spouting but I wish I could’ve heard.

The Tate Modern part was one of my FAVOURITE parts. Everyone squeezed in till the floor was PACKED… and then.. everyone laid down on their backs simultaneously and spontaneously, forming a flat sea of crazy drunk Santas. It was so super funny I just laid there laughing while Roger tried to take a photo (but it ended up too blurry to share).

Teamed up with some strangers to form a Santa pyramid.. !!

Don’t know who the girl is at the bottom.. I think she was trying to have her photo taken with our awesome pyramid -_-

After a whole lot of dancing, blowing whistles, confetti-popping etc, the hoard moved along the Thames.. for some reason my memory of this section is a bit.. blurred. Hmm……

Oh god that Alien stomach was still around at this point..

I love my fleece Santa onesie <3

Apparently it’s quite common to catch a drunk/insane Santa climbing all sorts of inanimate objects around London.

We saw this dude and some people on the ground were chanting ‘Jump! Jump! Jump!’, whilst his mates were trying to change everyone’s chants to ‘SAFETY! SAFETY! SAFETY!’ . Aww so sweet!

My blurred memory tells me we crossed another bridge over to Embankment after this.. and I think I had a few dancing sessions with buskers along the way as well. You just couldn’t help it! Everyone was in such a happy bouncy mood.. in fact sometimes I was dancing to absolutely no music at all. Only the music in my MIND.

After making a pee-stop/drink-stop at some bar, we carried on to the most reliable restaurant ever – McDonalds. WE ATE LIKE THERE WAS NO TOMORROW.

Cos we needed the energy.. as the next event on the list was the big meet up at Trafalgar Square! This is when all groups from the three meeting points earlier congregate in one area and go berserk.

This was a group of sweet, innocent carollers trying to sing a few Christmas tunes at the Square.. until:

HAHA! I’m in there somewhere!!

If you’re a Londoner you’ll know that the Christmas tree erected at Trafalgar Square each year since 1947 is a gift from the city Oslo as a token of thanks for British help during the second world war. It’s rather a tall tree.

So it was much to my amazement when a topless Santa climbed all the way to the TOP and left his hat there! Everyone was cheering him on. The story is that when he got down, the security guards pounced on him immediately, but all the Santas nearby tackled the guards so that Tree Climbing Santa managed to run away ;p

We partied on through Covent Garden, to Leicester Square, to Piccadilly Circus..
Harrassed a few people on the way.. and belly-bumped other Santas when we saw them!

We were sitting on the steps outside some theatre to rest our feet when I thought of a great game, i.e. Yell Out Random Boys’ Names and See Who Answers. We made a friend called David. See, it’s a good game!

Wasted Santa became a photo opportunity for some 😉

With a couple of new friends (thanks Jeremy for the photo)!

Some guy made a super cool video of Santacon – found it on YouTube.. wow!

SO that summarises my 12 hours at London Santacon 2012. Yeah, I was at it for about 12 hours! My Santa duties didn’t stop until I had gone INTO my building. When I was walking home from my tube station, I got stopped for photos and people asking for presents. Aww. It was soooo much fun!  😉

If you haven’t participated in Santacon before, you must! Check out www.santacon.co.uk for more info.

*special thanks to Jayna for a few of the pics. all photos except jeremy’s taken with the iphone (4/5)*

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I loved them so much that after spending hours at their Piccadilly store for the first time, I made a special trip back just to take pictures of these magnificent baubles! And no, I didn’t buy any although I was incredibly tempted to – they start at £20 each.
Just think.. these are JUST the baubles.. there was a whole array of other magical-looking types of tree deco you could get! It is the most amazing store *sigh*

Because I was so excited.. there are LOTS of bauble pics
I hope you enjoy them too!

BAUBLE OVERLOAD??

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