Secret Santa picnic time

Still a strange mixture of words for me, Santa and picnic, one means Christmas and the other summer... OK, not a odd combination for those born in the southern hemisphere, but for me, the two words still don't seem to match.

Anyway, we had a picnic a couple of weeks back! We being the WSBN. We've now been a group for over a year. It doesn't seem like it, but we had a first birthday dinner the other week...

I digress, this post is about the picnic, the pretty frocks and the Secret Santa notions game.

We met at the sound shell in the Botanic Gardens. It's a great place for picnics and we were even entertained by a string quartet.

I can't believe I didn't take any photos of the food, I must have been enjoying it too much :-) We had sausage rolls, picnic pie, egg and cheese rolls, asparagus rolls, coleslaw, beetroot, followed by strawberries (lots), lemon tarts, forgotten biscuits, brownies, all swallowed down with fizzy grape juice... Phew, I'm full up thinking of it all. :-) We certainly know how to create a feast!

The dress code was to wear pretty frocks - do we need encouragement? And there were certainly lots of pretty frocks around, absolutely stunning ladies...

Hang on, is A Charm of Magpies showing off her knickers, nope, its the sparkly petticoat :-)

Our Secret Santa was fun, lots of lovely goodies to be had. However, this was not a Secret Santa with the normal rules, these were different. Basically we were encouraged to steal from others if we didn't like what we opened and liked something else. As you can imagine, there was quite a bit of fighting over some gifts!

A Charm of Magpies opens her first gift as The Crazy Gypsy looks on...

Not content, The Crazy Gypsy decides to open her own...

Methinks A Charm of Magpies had her gift stolen, time to open another :-)

Two Random Words gets a go

 It's mine, all mine says Flossie FT

There was certainly a lot of fighting taking place. Three strikes at the same gift and it's yours! And I didn't even take a photo of mine... I got a roll of ribbon and some earrings made from bobbins.

So that's Christmas here in Wellington. Unfortunately the weather today isn't quite as clement as it was on our picnic. It's Christmas eve and we have low cloud, rain and a severe weather warning for winds gusting to 120kmh, well this is Wellington. Yesterday was stunning, wall to wall sunshine with a strong breeze. Here's hoping tomorrow it brightens up so we can get out. We have guests staying who are expecting a summer Christmas...

So all that leaves me to do is to wish you all a Merry Christmas and hope that it brings you all you wish for. I'm hoping there might be something sewing related, but unfortunately I don't think the family have quite cottoned (geddit?) on yet...

I shall finish with a photo of our Christmas tree which is looking decidedly windswept :-) (It's a real tree from the windy city!) But hey, look at all those pressies...

Merry Christmas!