Sunday, December 22, 2019

Make Being Home for the Holidays Your Best Staycation Ever

With the Christmas and New Year looming closer and closer, the holiday jitters may have already begun to bug you. You’re staying home for the holidays to avoid the hustle and bustle of travel. No searching for tickets, no packing, no driving, no losing your sanity when one of your kids disappears.

But now you’ve just found out that your family’s coming over to spend the holidays with you. Talk about keeping your staycation a secret. Oh well, it can’t be undone. And the best thing you can do now is to deal with it, prepare, and make everyone as comfortable as possible.

Now, you feel like you’ve got a million things to do, and you’re going back and forth with your holiday list. Pantry – check! Ooops, uncheck! Instead of just you and the kids, you’re going to be feeding a whole platoon, at least. Best stock up on your pantry supplies, water, and cold drinks.

After all, you’ve got a grand old backyard barbie planned for Christmas dinner.

You’ll need steaks, chops, sausages and seafood, and perhaps a couple of cheese pizzas for the fussy kids, large mushrooms, and tofu and vegetable skewers for the vegetarian. You also plan on a roast (turkey or ham) and plum pudding for a traditional holiday touch.  Oh dear!  Do you have the space to store everything you need? Then the kids ask if you’re going to be making Anzac biscuits, Christmas cake, and Pavlova. 

Crikey! Where’d they get the intel, you wonder. And your clever little boy says, from the internet by googling “traditional Aussie holiday dinner.” Better turn off the wi-fi for the time being lest more holiday food ideas get into your kids’ heads.

If you’re badly in need of fridge space, you can avail of a fridge hire service, so you get to keep your sanity when the holidays arrive. You can stock up on the ingredients you need for your holiday spread (and more) as early as now, so you won’t be panicking close to the holidays when not even the shadow of a turkey is in sight at the supermarket.

And while you’re at it, include an air conditioner hire to keep family cool, and comfy in the guest rooms (or your room).

You can also avail of Xbox, PS4 and Wii gaming packages to keep the kids busy as the adults engage in a bit of gossip over a few cold ones. Isn’t that the kind of holiday staycation you want?

Well, just don’t think about the cleanup after. Happy holidays!