Christmas planning

My sister use to make Christmas cake but she hasn't made it in quite a few years now. It was always a treat when we went to her house on Boxing Day. That is the thing I love so much about Christmas, everyone has their own traditions that make each Christmas celebration uniquely their own.
 
I looked at the recipe that SatNav posted on here and the cake looks like it would be really rich. I can't believe that it would stay good to eat for an entire year, that is amazing. Christmas cake must be a European tradition as I have never seen them around here. We have a lot of Palatone cakes floating around during the holidays. It looks like a pretty cake, but I am not sure I would like all the fruit and molasses that the cake contains.
 
A lady who used to work with me was from Jamaica and 1 year she made a Christmas cake made with with rum and handed out slices, it stunk and was so moist it was wet so when I got home it went straight in the dustbin. I like a shot of rum but the smell and texture of that cake made me feel very :sick:
 
@Caribbean girl Yes every year I really plan early for the Christmas season and we inherited this trait from my grandparents and parents wherein I grew up seeing them doing this kind of early preparation and excitement. Christmas Day is celebrated only once a year that is why we see to it that we are really spreading the love, joy and happiness together with all our love ones and families during this special day.
 
We really don't do any planning as far as Christmas cooking is concerned because we have the usual dishes - menudo and macaroni soup. We spend Christmas in the house of my sister, it's her birthday so it is our family tradition to be there on that day. What we bring is menudo, the dish made of pork and meat and liver that is flavored with tomatoes and soy sauce. The cooking is Spanish style where the dish has an oily sauce which is very tasty and goes very well with bread. With rice, it is also a good match. With the macaroni soup, it is a mix of pork and chicken meat that is cooked like the ordinary chicken soup but with a variance, of course, for our original recipe.
 
I am done with my shopping. I still have a lot of items left from the previous year that would explain it. Right now I am planning on what theme I should be using for my decors. I make it a point to come up with new ideas each year. It has always been the red and greens and golds maybe this year I will build my own Christmas village
 
Shopping wise we always do a calendar for family and friends (I do a lot of photography) and we have just purchased the credits for this years calendar which commits me to doing it! It is not cheap because I prefer that the calendar is good quality so we often pay £7-9 per calendar excluding P&P. Which reminds me that I need to start locating the pictures that I am going to be using for this years! It will have a tree theme to it I suspect!
 
For work I wrote and printed my Christmas menus back in August and booking were coming in from that time ,at home Christmas pud this month and the Christmas cake then nothing till the week before ,was considering a pre booked tesco delivery for the 23rd of December as we do Christmas on the 24th
 
We haven't started on gift buying yet, but I started planning Christmas food a couple of weeks ago - when the clocks go back and it starts to get darker earlier it always starts me thinking of Christmas. I love years like this one when its our turn to host the family: I get to plan all the food :)

Hubby laughs at my endless planning spreadsheets....but I find detailed planning helps us to budget and not go overboard buying things that won't get eaten. It also helps that I still have the plan from when we last hosted two years ago so I can remember what went down well and what we had too much of. We try to buy things gradually to spread the cost so I think its important to be organised so we know what we already have.
 
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