Ho Ho Happy Holidays.

(I sound like I'm trying not be offensive by not using the word Christmas. This is not the case, I just liked the alliteration. I'm not Christian and I'm not offended, so please get over yourself).

Christmas happened. It tends to do that, roughly the same time every year in fact. And we all seem to have roughly the same thing to do every year.

Most families have some sort of tradition. My best friend has Christmas dinner on boxing day and I've known people who celebrate on Christmas Eve before now (which I know is what a lot of Scandinavians do).

We do it on Christmas Day, as I know most people do. We get up a little too early after not quite enough sleep and open presents in our 4 piece family. There are thank yous and hugs, the occasional happy tear (usually my mum) and there is always a mess of wrapping paper; no matter how hard you try to clear it up. Then at a more reasonable time we head over to my grandparents' house for more presents and a delicious Christmas roast cooked by my nan and then home for Doctor Who.

We always say God help my mother when she has to cook a Christmas dinner, because she went straight from dinner with her family to dinner with my Dad's family. She can make a cracking roast, so it probably won't be much of a problem, but she hasn't ever done it on Christmas Day before.

Now it's New Year 2011 and I suppose I'll let you in on my new years' resolutions. Truth be told I've never been one to keep new years' resolutions so most of the time I don't bother making them - except the one year I made the paradoxical resolution to break my new years' resolution. I just don't see the point in putting all these restraints on yourself in January that will be long gone by February. The whole idea of new years' resolutions is that people pledge to do things that they probably won't be able to do and then they don't feel bad when they break them because everyone else breaks theirs as well. The system is set up to fail.

Which is why I did 365 days in 30 ways. I pledged in October to do 30 things that involve changing aspects of my life within a year. So far I'm doing okay with it.

My mum posted a blog post on http://faerieimportantstuff.blogspot.com/ where she talks about disliking new years' resolutions and you should all go and read that. I had the same idea as her at the same time as her and she just got there first. If I wasn't setting this to post exactly as the new year rolls in I could fiddle with the timestamps to make it look like I did it first, but that would be a little bit mean wouldn't it?

However, I do have a new years' resolution. I am stopping drinking little and often and starting drinking a lot in one go every now and then.

All the best for 2011 for you all, and we shall continue the search for Mini into the new year and beyond.

Advent calendar dilemma

When do you eat your advent calendar chocolate?

I feel like a big kid still having an advent calendar at the age of 18, but I’ve done it for the last 17 Christmases in a row so why would I stop now? I think the most childish part of it is that my mother bought me my advent calendar again.

For anybody interested, it’s a Mars one, which means it isn’t quite as good as the Cadbury one I had last year, but it is still pretty good. The window for Christmas Eve is really big as well so that’ll probably be a fun-size Mars bar I imagine.

But there is a dilemma which I face every morning when it comes to eating my advent calendar chocolate. Obviously you have to brush your teeth before you leave the house (although this doesn’t seem to be obvious to some people in my lectures, but so is life) but this will have an effect on your enjoyment of the chocolate.

The basic problem I have is: do you eat your advent calendar chocolate before or after you brush your teeth?

If you eat it before, then the taste of the chocolate gets washed away when you brush your teeth. However, if you eat it afterwards, the chocolate will taste funny. So, what do you do?

The bestest says she brushes her teeth, eats breakfast and then eats her chocolate, which seems to make sense as a logical sequence for when it comes to eating chocolate. But, I don’t eat breakfast. And I brush my teeth after breakfast if I ever get it because food gets stuck in my brace.

I still don’t know what to do in relation to eating my advent calendar chocolate and brushing my teeth. If anyone fancies giving me a solution that still allows me to have my daily December fix of chocolate in the morning before I have to go and do something else but allows me to have the most enjoyable chocolate experience that will last me the whole day.

Am I overthinking this? I should probably just eat my damn chocolate and get on with it.

365 days in 30 ways update: I received a parcel in the middle of last week, which contained a signed book by my lovely name twin Caroline Smailes. It also had a post-it-note which says ‘All the bestest lasses are called Caroline’ which now has pride of place at the top of my wall, which I will be able to resume showing you in January.

Number 24, checked off.