July 24, 2014 – 50 plus and loving life

I have loads and loads of Santa’s and his helpers, some hand made and some bought, but I love them all.

10 years ago our sons moved out of home and that was the last time that my Santa’s and his helpers saw the light of day. Last November, due to major health issues my in-laws moved into our home, and Grumpy Grainger decided that the Santa’s and his helpers could move to our lock up, poor buggers, banished to the cold and damp. So he picked them all up and took them down to the dark and damp lock up, where they sat waiting patiently for me to set our house up at Christmas time, that wasn’t going to happen or organise a Xmas in July.

What started out as me wanting to set up our home with the Santa’s and his helpers turned out to be a wonderful evening.

I initially put up an expression of interest for our friends on Facebook, expecting no more than about 20 of our friends, and all of our friends said that they wanted to come, so I decided to contact our club and see if we could hold the function (the numbers had grown to about 40 people at this stage and we didn’t want to have that many people in our home on a cold winters evening) at the MOFSC, well it took a bit of pressure on my part with a lot of pressure from Grumpy and we finally agreed on a cost for the meal and the night so I then created flyers and tickets, and each Thursday and Friday evenings I put flyers around the club and on the Saturday evenings, the girls from the restaurant put more flyers on the tables.

Well the numbers got to 72 on the evening, however 1 couple were not able to come as poor Marina broke her arm on her bike the previous weekend, so we had 70 attendees.

It was so much fun, the theme for Secret Santa presents was naughty or nice, and everyone had to buy a gift for the same sex to the value of $15, wrap it in newspaper and put a B for boy and G for girl on it, some people didn’t read the instructions very well and wrapped then pressies in pretty or Xmas paper.

We had a big blow up Santa on a Harley Davidson in the corner, on loan from Diane & Coleman, Anita borrowed some fantastic reindeer (Some were handmade) from her art class, we had a true Aussie Christmas tree (a potted green ficus), with g strings attached, decorated in true Christmas form and Santa’s and their helpers everywhere. The dinner started at 6:30 and once it was dark outside and the lights on the setting was like a true Christmas grotto.

Some of the pressies were a real laugh and everyone got into the spirit of the evening, I even dressed up as Sassy (my friend Bryan called me Sexy) Mother Christmas with my lovely short dress, stockings and broken suspenders.

A big thankyou to the ladies who came and helped me set up the Santa’s and the tables.

All we have to do now is book again for next year, I am thinking the theme might be hand made or DIY??

The secret to keeping flowers fresh in my opinion is simple, but for the life of me, I can’t remember where I got the idea from. This photo was taken last night 23/07/14, the flowers were given to me by my good friend Shelley for my birthday on Saturday 12/7/14, more than 1 week ago and they are still beautiful.

We were at a Christmas in July dinner at MOFSC and she brought the flowers in to me, as the table was full, I had to put them on the floor, when the dinner was over, we had to clean the restaurant and pack up all the decorations for collection the next morning. When we had cleaned up, packed all the Santa’s in their bags and crates, we went down to the boat to go to bed, I put the flowers 0n the galley bench until we got home the next morning, we woke up, went up to the club, after several trips with wheelbarrows back to the boat with the Santa’s, we finally go home around 9:00am when I put the flowers in as vase, I added the secret ingredient and look at them now.

Aspro clear soluble tablets is my secret and it really does work to keep flowers beautiful and fresh.