Happy Christmas! I hope you all had a wonderful time over the holidays and are enjoying the break in between Christmas and New Year if you get one! I’m really lucky as we finished at lunchtime on the 23rd and don’t get back to the office until the 2nd. While I’ve been checking in on both my work and blog emails during this time occasionally, I decided to completely switch off over Christmas. I haven’t done any blog writing, social media or anything for almost a week. In fact, my phone ran out of battery early in the day on Christmas Eve and I didn’t recharge it until yesterday!
I’ve shared before about our Christmas Eve traditions in 2012, 2011 and even 2010! but since this is another Christmas Eve outfit, I’ll tell you again! When I was younger, my grandma used to host Christmas Eve at her house – my family would congregate there along with my mum’s two sisters and their families. Over the years, we’ve all got bigger and the family has started to expand with partners joining us (next year we’ll have the first baby on that side too as my cousin’s girlfriend is pregnant!). So a few years ago, we moved the party over to my mum and dad’s house, also inviting my grandparents on my dad’s side, along with his brother and family. It means that this year we had 22 people plus 4 dogs round on Christmas Eve!
It’s more of a relaxed evening with a finger food buffet and lots of puddings, provided by anyone who wants to bring anything – the star of the show is always my mum’s honey and mustard sausages!
I used to dress up a lot for Christmas Eve with a new fancy dress and heels, but nowadays I dress down a little more. This year, I picked out a dress I made a few years ago and have worn to Christmas Eve before along with a pair of sparkly flats – you can see these in action here, but I wore boots to travel over there since it was icy! And on top of that, my new parka from MissPap that I’ve been wearing on repeat over everything recently. I’ve noticed all the youths wearing parkas in the past few years but thought I couldn’t get away with wearing one. In the end, I thought I’d just give one a go and was offered this faux fur lined one from MissPap – I’ve fallen in love. It’s SO warm and easy to wear over jeans and dresses. Plus the faux fur is super cosy – the strips down either side of the fastenings can be removed so I’ve got them off at the moment but will put them back on for colder days.
When I put on the dress, I made the resolve NOT to immediately tell everyone I’d worn it before, but inevitably, as soon as my grandma commented on my dress, I responded: “I wore it a few years ago! Just pretend you’ve never seen it before!!”
I ended up not taking outfit photos on Christmas Day for one big reason: I couldn’t see! The first thing I do every day when I wake up is put in my contact lenses. I don’t have terrible vision but I can’t see all that well without my “eyes”, as I call them. But apparently I wasn’t very careful putting them away on Christmas Eve as I pulled my left contact lens out of the case and split it straight down the middle! I put it into my eye anyway (I know, I know!) and spent most of the morning, while opening presents with my family and chatting with Ben’s family at his parents’, bothered by my eye. Then half way through Christmas dinner, I gave up and chucked it in the bin.
Because I’m very clever (#sarcasm), I’d looked at my glasses on my nightstand while packing my overnight bag for Christmas and thought, “It’s only one day – I won’t need glasses!”. The rest of Christmas Day and Boxing Day morning was spent with one blurry eye!
I buy my contact lenses from Vision Direct without fail – they arrive super quickly, remind me when I need new ones and include a mini packet of Haribo in the box too, what more could I want? So luckily I have a good supply at home ready to use, but being without a contact lens for just 24 hours made me realise that I need to take better care of my eyes and contact lenses in the new year. It was torture being without! I’m generally quite lazy with eye care and just expect my contact lenses will sort themselves out overnight, but I know I should be a lot more careful with keeping them clean and safe. I hated not being able to see properly and if anything were to happen to my eyes, I’d be lost. I usually try to take a day off a week to wear glasses so my eyes have a bit of a break, but I’ve been very lax at this recently, so I’m going to give that a renewed go in January.
Anyway, aside from the contact lens fiasco, we had a lovely Christmas Day. Unfortunately Ben’s grandad had been in an accident on his bike about a week before Christmas and broke his hip, and really annoyingly, he wasn’t able to come out of hospital before Christmas. On the actual day, part of the family went to visit him, but it wasn’t the same without him there at the table, but fortunately he came out last night and we’ve been over to see him this morning – he’s doing a lot better now he’s out of hospital and is almost completely back to his normal self now. Except he’s very upset that the ambulance service had to cut his “good trousers” off to get to his hip!
Outfit details
Parka Jacket: c/o MissPap | Holly Dress: Memade (Great British Sewing Bee Shift Dress pattern) | Bolero: Nomads Clothing | Boots: House of Fraser
