Harrison-Helin's Christmas Eve pot-luck party!

Our plan to have a small scale Christmas celebration at home here in Edinburgh this year is no more. Gone. Out the door. Erin and Svante will still be coming over from Sweden of course, but ‘adventurous’ as we are, we have decided to put our apartment to the test once more by hosting a Christmas pot-luck on Christmas Eve! Maeghan & Reg and their friends are coming, and Jen & Mike are coming as well, so all in all we will be 12(½) people here in our 1 bedroom apartment. So, as you can imagine, Ethan will not be lacking people to charm over Christmas, that’s for sure!

Also, on Christmas Eve during the day, the girls will be coming over for a baking-session in our teeny tiny kitchen. Pumpkin pies and gingerbread men and gingerbread MC Hammers will be made for the rest of us to enjoy (Ethan and I will help out by eating the delicious dough of course). Speaking of which; we will have to start planning our annual Christmas raid of IKEA's food market soon! Lists will have to be made and logistics will have to be organized, preferably before all the goodies have sold out.

Off the top of my head, these are some of the must-have items for Christmas Eve:

- Glögg (mulled wine)
- Köttbullar (Swedish meatballs)
- Gravlax
- Julöl (Christmas beer)
- Kaviar (smoked fish rye that you put on bread)
- Julskinka (grilled Christmas ham)
- Lussekatter (saffron buns)
- Polly (awesomeness in the shape of chocolate bon-bons)

As we’ve been saying before, we are really looking forward to giving Ethan a fab first Christmas, we are really looking forward to seeing everyone, and we are definitely looking forward to a bit more time off before the year is over.

Oh, and did you notice the snazzy Christmas decorations we've decorated the blog with?