Ten days of pre-Christmas celebrations

December is my favourite month of the year. Partly because it contains Christmas Day, but also because the build-up to Christmas is just as exciting as the day itself for me.

As I've enjoyed quite a few pre-Christmas celebrations during the last ten days, I thought this would be a very appropriate topic to blog about with just four sleeps to go before the big day.

One of my favourite Christmassy traditions is the annual office Secret Santa lunch with my colleagues. We all bring in a different item of food (the food list is planned with military precision to avoid duplication), we exchange our Secret Santa gifts, and we partake in a quiz and laugh a lot. I was so happy with my thoughtful and completely perfect gift this year... 100 collectible postcards from Disney's Golden Age! I can't wait to frame some of these beauties over the Christmas holidays.

A few hours after our Secret Santa lunch, we went out as a communications team for a few cocktails at our new favourite bar - Be at One. When the menu is about 30 pages long and the cocktails seem to be 'buy one, get one free' whenever we go there, what's not to love? Although we didn't stay out late as we were working the next day, it was lovely to spend some time with the team outside of work and to indulge in some very delicious cocktails on a school night! 

A few days after our Secret Santa lunch, it was time for the annual work Christmas party. We went for a meatylicious meal in Viva Brazil, followed by drinks at Kongs/ Two brand new places for me! The Prosecco was flowing and it was a great evening with lots of laughing and catching up. I even bought new sparkly shoes and a sparkly bag for the occasion. If you can't wear sparkly shoes at Christmas, when can you? 

We were supposed to go out to Neil's work Christmas party the night after my party, but we were both exhausted so we had a Saturday night in with two massive Papa John's pizzas and Home Alone instead. I then continued the excessive eating the day after by driving to McArthur Glen to meet Sarah in Frankie and Benny's. I had a cajun chicken wrap but didn't photograph my food... I must have been REALLY tired! 

On Monday evening, we went to Tony's in Penarth with Sophie and Bryan as we hadn't caught up with them for a while. We had a lovely meal (I went for pasta rather than my usual pizza, due to the pizza overload over the weekend), then we all went back to our house to play Monopoly on the Nintendo Switch. Jessie was ridiculously excited about having visitors... there was a lot of barking, leaping and general over-excitedness on her part. 

I finished work for Christmas on Tuesday and Neil randomly had the Wednesday off work, so we took the opportunity to go in to Cardiff to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I was slightly lost for parts of the film as I'm not a Star Wars fan and haven't got a clue about the back story, but I thought it was a pretty good film overall. Also, I love love love BB-8. 

Lastly, to finish off this very Christmassy ten days, I went for afternoon tea with Jo in my favourite place - Pettigrew Tea Rooms. We've both had a rubbish couple of years in many ways so we thought we'd treat ourselves to afternoon tea just before Christmas. I had to get my slice of cake boxed up to take away because I was too full to eat it after my massively indulgent hot chocolate, sandwiches and scones! But don't panic, I ate it a couple of hours after I got home and loved every bit of it. 

I'll be blogging about our actual Christmas celebrations next week, if I'm not in a food coma by then... in the meantime, hope all my readers have a lovely Christmas!