I’ve had the most beautiful weekend so far!  It’s involved so many of my favourite things such as spending time with loved ones and old friends, gift shopping, wrapping presents and eating amazingly delicious food.  My brilliant weekend started on Friday, the official start of my Christmas holidays.  I was greeted at home my a lovely package from Woman & Home magazine.  I received their Feel Good Food magazine that is just full of beautiful food photography and recipes.   I’ve been eying up the box of chocolates since they arrived, but I’ve trying to save them for the Christmas holidays. 

After having our work Christmas masquerade party last week, a work Christmas lunch at Pizza Express on Wednesday, we of course fancied another on Friday too…as you do! We went to an office favourite called Okwari, a fantastic Japanese restaurant.  I had a teriyaki bento box with salmon rolls and edamame beans.  It was quite a feast and utterly delicious,  although I did have to be rolled back to the office afterwards.

After all of these work lunches I’ve had it with eating out now.  I guess it is the season to be filling your boots with delicious food, as much as I have been having fun I think I’ve reached my limit.  There has been a lot of belt loosening and undoing the top button of my jeans this week.  To reign things in a bit I had a nourishing and refreshing green smoothie after my gym workout yesterday.  It included spinach, banana, pear, vanilla crème protein powder and oat milk, perfect!

We then loaded our presents into the car ready to go visiting family and friends.  On our journey we stopped off to do a bit of shopping and sought out the Christmas market where I picked up a falafel wrap to tide me over on the long drive to visit my family.

We all just hung out at out family home…

…it’s been in the family for centuries…ahem!  Ha!  I wish. Check that out for a Christmas tree, it looked magical and is bloody massive.   We actually went out for a festive family meal at the beautiful Stapleford Park. 

Here’s me and my fabulous Nan, I love this lady!  I decided to wear my new dress from Vila via Zalando and my new suede cowboy boots in tan, also from Zalando with black tights and a red knitted cardigan from Primark.  I was sent some vouchers from Zalando for me to review some of their products and I really love that dress.  It feels so comfortable on and the deep inky blue colour is great.

The food was absolutely gorgeous:

I had the wild mushroom veloute amuse bouche followed by the crab starter and the hake for my main, definitely my kind of Christmas dinner.  None of us has room for any dessert so instead we enjoyed tea and petite fours:

Those mini mince pies were gorgeous! The perfect end to a brilliant evening, it really was perfect.  The only downside was that my little brother couldn’t make it as he had to work…sad face!

We didn’t get back until really late, so today I have nothing planned except to chill out and watch Christmas movies all day long and read some recipe books.  I may get in the kitchen and cook up some treats too, but we shall see.

Are you going out for a festive family meal this year? 

What have you been getting up this weekend?