Of course the party season brings about celebrations in a variety of forms and this year seems to have been busier than ever already!

I thoroughly enjoyed my first Christmas celebration of the year in the form of our flat party, decorations lighting up the room beautifully and a variety of music to enjoy ranging from chart stuff, Christmas songs to High School Musical and as the one in control, I was pleased to see a number of people also singing along word for word to the High School Musical tracks... a truly magical moment!
The following morning we also had our Christmas dinner with crackers, gifts and games... the full works! It was a lovely end to the term, to enjoy each other's company without worrying about other work or commitments.

The weekend just gone, we had another lovely weekend celebrating my dad's birthday, so on Saturday night we had four of his friends/family over for an 80s meal with old records on dad's new record player, which he got for his birthday. I'm sure this excited him a little too much and that excitement seemed to grow throughout the evening particularly as he had to adjust the volume a few times during a game. The game of pick sticks (pick a stick and it has either a dare, charade, joke, description or song for you to do) definitely became a competition between Vicky and Paul who both really wanted to win and did not hold back from showing their competitive side!

After the lovely evening, we finished dad's birthday celebrations at my grandparents with another interesting game of charades, where I then showed my competitive side... although it worked as our team won!

To start the festive celebrations this week, my cousins came around and we took a trip to the Nottingham Winter Wonderland. It was a really fun afternoon/evening. Starting in the Ice Bar, which was smaller than I expected and they weren't the quickest or most efficient at serving drinks but it was fun nonetheless and a good experience that I'd recommend trying if you get the option to. I wasn't that cold myself but it was certainly cold in the room. We then had a browse of the market stalls, enjoying the food they had on offer, including the french pancakes and chocolate fruit pots.

My favourite moment of the evening was on the ice... I love so many winter sports and ice skating is no different! I remember ice skating for the first time with two of my cousins, me being held by the older one, whilst I struggled to stand up, as the other cousin (a couple of years older than me) flew around the ice rink. To then take my second cousins and try and help them (one of which had been once before) years later was really nice. Both did really well with the older one rivalling (or surpassing) my brother's skills.

To finish the evening, we had the best taxi ride I've ever had with coloured lights and loud music... perfect way to finish the night. Although, I now never want any other taxi!
So far, it's all been a lot of fun and I'm definitely looking forward to the events throughout the rest of the week and of course, finishing with the best day of all... Christmas day!

What have you been doing to celebrate?  Have you got anything exciting coming up this week, apart from Christmas day? I hope you enjoyed hearing about my Christmas events so far. If you did and want to see more, you can follow my social media links in the top right-hand corner to see when I next upload. Don't forget I'm uploading everyday this week so make sure you're following me and are subscribed to my YouTube channel ready for Thursday's upload over there. Thank you for reading this post.

Love, Steph x