It’s hard to believe Christmas is just a little over a week away. This weekend we were busy holiday prepping. My husband’s family is all coming for Christmas, last count was 19 people. My in-laws own the house right next door to us which makes it especially nice when we have so many people coming. I’ve been bugging my husband since the beginning of December to get a tree. Every year, we chop down one of the trees at my in-laws house. Norfolk pines are not traditional trees for Christmas, but a lot of people use them here in Hawaii. They don’t have the nice smell of other kinds of trees, and aesthetically they have a very different look. What’s nice about them is that there are no needles that die and fall off all over your floor, they stay fresh looking for a very long time, AND they have lots of room to put on all our ornaments. They are hard to string lights on, so typically we just string them down the trunk.
Now that the tree is up, I finally feel like the holidays have hit our home.
Last year my sister sent me some great maple syrup from her hometown in New Hampshire for Christmas. This year I asked her if I could barter with the maple syrup lady (that’s what I called her before I found out her name!) with some of our local goods. So we traded some coffee and spices for the syrup. I LOVE bartering. There are just some things we can’t grow or get here, and to be able to share and trade some of our farm with someone else is really nice.
We did manage to do a little homesteading stuff this weekend – mowed the yard, made jelly, made two separate batches of soap (a papaya one and a hibiscus tea one), harvested breadfruit and yacon for the farmer’s market, and planted some pretty ornamentals in the orchid grotto.
Tomorrow my Christmas packages for my mainland family and friends will go out (the packages are in the car ready to go!). I have some gift wrapping to do, but for the most part am feeling fairly prepared for the holidays. The best part of this season is that my children will be home, and we get to spend it all together as a family. My husband and children ask what I want, but really all I want is to just spend time with all of them.
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