I was just wondering, for those who celebrate Christmas… when do you usually open your gifts?

I just finished reading a load of Christmas-related blog posts and from the looks of it, my family is one of the few who open gifts before midnight on Christmas Eve. Have we been doing it the wrong way all this time?!

But anyways… today is Christmas!! Our relatives came by last night to eat and open gifts, and my eldest sister who lives in Ottawa is staying for a couple of days. This meant that our house got pretty crowded yesterday with twelve people under one roof. Nope, it’s never a quiet Christmas in my family !

We took the traditional Christmas family pictures, saw that someone moved in one of the shots, took retakes, took some more pictures AND THEN we ate. There was a lot of food to go around like the carrot cake we made below, leche flan, roasted chicken, cheesecake, etc., but the main star of the show was the honey-glazed ham. It was so huge that, even now, we’ve still got leftovers in the fridge!

After that, we went and opened our gifts! I was really happy that I took pictures of my family’s reactions as they opened their presents. The happy look on their faces is just priceless. I’m glad everyone liked what I bought for them.

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Here are some shots from last weekend’s Christmas party! We have this huge party every year with all our family friends and friends of friends where we eat, talk, play games, and dance. All the parents had this dance competition (which was so embarrassing!) and we all had a hilarious time doing the cha cha slide. We played games like ‘Guess this Word’, ‘Broken Telephone’ and ‘Musical Chairs’ which I was the winner of!

Although a few images are blurry, I actually like the bleary feel of them. They remind me of film cameras and their perfect imperfectness (makes sense?). Oh and sorry for the inconsistencies between their colors—still experimenting with it!

I spent most of my time taking pictures of this little guy. He did an awesome job dancing to Billy Jean!

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First of all, I want to thank you for all the nice comments on my thrift store post and the flattering compliments about the layout. I think this one will definitely be staying for quite a while, seeing as it’s such a crowd pleaser.

I was hoping to blog much earlier, but my life has been feeling very bland as of late. I really didn’t want to bore anyone with an entry about how I managed to kill a fruit fly that was buzzing around my room a few days back. No, I wanted to save blogging for the days when something fun actually happened around here. And yesterday was one of those days!

So yesterday, my mum, my two brother’s and I spent our day at the CNE (an annual fair in Canada). We had a lot of fun, especially since the weather was on our side that day. The first thing we did when we stepped through the gates was go straight to the ribfest. That isn’t what you usually do first thing when you arrive at a fair, but what can I say? We didn’t eat breakfast that morning…and that made the rib sauce all the more yummier. :9

Next, we went roaming around the place. My brother’s got to play some games and my older one went to these betting stalls and actually won some money. It was funny how the dealer had to ask my older brother how old he was. I guess he looks much too short for his age (i’m a few cm’s from his height!). hahaha

None of us rode any rides, but I still enjoyed my time looking at everything. I took lots of pictures of the different booths there. I really love the old carnival feel to them and it makes me happy that they still use them. Unfortunately, during one part of the day, there was a huge smudge in my camera lens and I didn’t notice it until much later. Some of my good shots were ruined! 

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