I don’t want to bother everyone this year with a breakdown of Christmas like I did last year. Not that it wasn’t WONDERFUL, but it’s tradition for a reason – it was approximately the exactly the same as last year. Christmas Eve was at one aunt’s house – we hit 7 fish again (crab, lobster, shrimp, scallops, calamari, clams, tilapia). Christmas Day was at another aunt’s house – we the same exact awesome antipasto as last year – except this year the black olives had pits in them. One thing that did change though was the place settings, so I wanted to share those with you.
Here were the place settings for Christmas Eve. I love the simplicity of them, and I love that they come with a candy cane. These were made by Aunt Mary (I believe).
For Christmas Day, I actually got a text message from Aunt Jeannie asking if I could help her out with the name tags. I was THRILLED! I have a feeling I’m not going to be able to host any parties of my own for a while (because my living accommodations hold 8 people maximum, 4 if we want to sit at a table) – so I jumped at the opportunity to make some name tags. Here’s the picture that I got in a text message, with the caption “red, silver, gold”. Now, I just assumed that those were the colors and all of these objects were actually just silver. Lies – this is a black and white picture. What they actually are is photo holders, which is SUPER smart for name tags – you just write the names down and slide them in and the automatically stand up!
So playing off of the idea that the name tags would stand up, I decided to make them super tall. I also made the last minute decision to stamp everybody’s name onto the tags, letter by letter. (My mother was worried about this because I started making them approximately 45 minutes before we left for Aunt Jeannie’s house – oh ye of little faith. Made it with time to spare – I think I even showered before leaving… maybe.)
And here was the final product…
What do you think?














