Day To Day: Calm Conversations with a Friend

#8 Xmas Lights and Gingerbread

• Jacquie Joy • Season 1 • Episode 8

Share episode

Send us a text

Our hearts are with everyone in LA who have suffered from the devastation of these fires.  

In this episode I talk about the incredible magic of Christmas Tree Lane (a 140 year old lighting ceremony in Altadena) which has very sadly been in the path of the Eaton fire.  

Here is a link to donate to the people of Altadena who have lost their home in and around Christmas Tree Lane.

https://www.directrelief.org/emergency/california-wildfires/


This episode/chat invites you to reminisce about enchanting Christmas decorations that turn ordinary streets into magical wonderlands. From the charmingly named Candy Cane Lane to a neighbor's delightful inflatable kangaroo, we revel in the magic that these festive displays bring to our lives. Your friend chats about festive food including Tilly’s Gingerbread Trifle- and with delightful ingredients like peaches, jelly, and custard, this unexpected trifle flavor adds a sweet twist to festive traditions.  She also discusses a trending skin care product, an afternoon at a women’s soccer game and also chats about re-discovering the backyard trampoline for fitness.  So, grab a cozy seat, perhaps a cup of hot cocoa, and enjoy a journey through lights, laughter, and the true essence of holiday cheer.


Jacquie Joy:

Welcome to the Day-to-Day Podcast, calm Conversations with a Friend, spoken by Jacquie Joy, and you are listening to Episode 8. You decide to check your messages. One new voicemail it's from one of your friends. You decide it's time to sit down, make yourself comfortable and have a listen. Hey, thank you so much for your message and for all of your wonderful photos and stories about the christmas house and street displays in la.

Jacquie Joy:

I would love to visit these places like with such cute names Candy Cane Lane, christmas Tree Lane I love it and Sleepy Hollow. The places sound so magical. Well, they look so magical, and I loved seeing all the trees covered with fairy lights. I sort of wish that the fairy lights on the trees in these public spaces were left on all year round rather than being removed two weeks after Christmas. There's a restaurant we go to semi-regularly and we sit outdoors and they have this beautiful big tree and it is decorated all year round with fairy lights and it's magical and it really adds such a great vibe to the outdoor dining experience there. I'll send through a pickey and you can see that it's one of those old big fig trees which around here, a lot of them are heritage listed, so I expect. This restaurant was told that and had to work out a way to make it work in the restaurant. Actually, I've just looked it up online and yes, it's a Mortton Bay fig tree, 60 years old, and apparently it's draped in 7.5 kilometres worth of fairy lights. So that's been a great way to celebrate, I suppose, the historic nature of the tree in that community and also make it look wonderful.

Jacquie Joy:

But I digress on my fairy light chat. We were talking about trees covered with fairy lights on your Christmas walks. I mean, there were so many other incredible decorations and of course, one of those standouts, as you highlighted, was the polar express train in someone's yard on display. I mean that was really quite something and I wonder how they constructed that. It certainly didn't look like an inflatable. It's good that you are learning the magic of the Christmas inflatables and thank you so much for taking all of those pickies for me.

Jacquie Joy:

Of all those amazing huge structures, the what is my favorite, I mean the gigantic, ginormous Santa was absolutely mind-blowing house, but it was twice as high as it and it did look very similar to that one that you sent me on the link, which was 33 feet or 10 meters high here. Um, tall and and interesting fact that's about two-thirds as high as a Hollywood sign. I really also loved the pickies of all of the other inflatables that you sent my way the reindeer, the candy canes, the snowman, christmas trees and the Christmas arch. The Christmas arch reminded me of our friends who are our neighbor's house and they have a Christmas arch and under it or just behind it is a huge inflatable kangaroo, so I'll send you a pic of that. And the other feature of their house is a large joy sign on there, which I love. In fact, I've noticed the joy sign on houses is a real feature of Christmas decorations here this year.

Jacquie Joy:

Obviously, my surname is very festive. There doesn't seem to be as many Christmas lights around here this year, but Brisbane still does have maps available online of where you can visit houses and streets with the best displays. So they are around, but just a little less in our neighborhood this year anyway. Definitely my bucket list is one day when we catch up again in person. Hopefully it's around christmas time and we can do a tour of all of the Christmas decorations and wonderful displays in your local streets. We can have a few bubbles and just enjoy all the colourful, bright lights, inflatables and celebrations and music that comes with this time of year, and celebrations and music that comes with this time of year.

Jacquie Joy:

And also, what comes with this time of year is Christmas baking, and I visited Tilly this morning and arrived just in time to smell her delicious Christmas cake come out of the oven. It was amazing. She had added gingerbread to it and she sort of had a bit of a gingerbread theme going, because she opened her fridge and showed me a lovely gingerbread trifle, which is something I've never seen before as a trifle flavour. I did ask her for the ingredients so I could share with you too. The first layer was peaches, jelly and custard. Second layer was butter cake sprinkled with ginger beer, which is rather different. Third layer was caramel, cinnamon whipped cream and she included gingerbread or ginger nut biscuits broken up into this layer and then the top was sprinkled with toasted flaked almonds. It was just a bit different and interested to hear what you think about that. So you will have to let me know what you are baking for Christmas time.

Jacquie Joy:

We are making a roast pork with sage, I think, and cranberry stuffing. We've had it once before. We ran it through a test because it takes around three and a half hours to make, so we just wanted to make sure that the pork was going to be fully cooked and that it tasted just right for Christmas day. We were also asked to make a salad, so we made a shredded chicken and sweet potato salad with cranberry dressing. I'm just thinking I may have mentioned this one to you before, because we did make it about three weeks ago to take to a friend's house. It was absolutely. I'm not a big salad fan, to be honest, but this is amazing. The dressing. It has a fairly large amount of chicken in it as well, and love sweet potato. I loved everything in it. In fact, let me know if I haven't passed that recipe on to you. It's definitely worth looking at and, even more amazing for us, it's allergy friendly. Yay.

Jacquie Joy:

So I just got a Christmas card from one of my good friends from school and it's a physical card and I thought well, I mean, do you write out physical cards still? So this was really special. It's got a gingerbread tree stamp on it and a little rubber duck stamp, which makes me think that stamps are also a real thing of the past, as well as physical cards mailing letters. Maybe people don't get the time to do this anymore, or is it too expensive? So I opened the envelope to be presented with another envelope which had the card in it. She'd made the effort to also put a Christmas sticker on the back of the envelope to seal it, and then she's written a gorgeous little Christmas card. The texture of it feels like it's like linen, beautiful paper, and it was just saying hey, I'm sitting in a cafe we have something here called the shingle in which is a really traditional and high tea type of coffee cake restaurant chain.

Jacquie Joy:

It's been here for many, many years. The decor is extremely traditional and old-school dark timber, polished. People go there just as an experience, and obviously my friend was just sitting writing, thinking of her life and her friends and how she was grateful and rather than texting us, she decided to take the effort, buy a card, sit down and write on it, so, so that was lovely. Needless to say, you'll be receiving my Christmas greetings via voicemail. As I would have had to be very, very organized to send you a physical card Around Christmas time especially, I would look at sending a card to the US four to six weeks before I would expect it to arrive. I would actually still probably send it earlier, because the basic mail service between US and Australia seems to have gotten rather slow, especially since COVID.

Jacquie Joy:

Yeah, we've been still going to a few sports games here and there. The footy has finished now and it's all cricket, as I was speaking about in my last message. Soccer and football seem to have come back into season here. Male football or soccer is not really popular here. Male football or soccer is not really popular here. However, the women's soccer has become super popular since a female team, who are called the Matildas, did really well a year or two ago this game.

Jacquie Joy:

They were versing Brazil and I was surprised at the audience oh, how loud they were, how constant they were and the active participation in regards to the audience following the ball and the emotion and the many ups and downs of the game. In soccer they don't score many points, so it can be a little well, let's say, boring if you are not into it, boring if you are not into it, but this was far from boring and I just realized I said that points are scored in soccer, but it is actually called goals. Here is some audio I took from the game and you can hear the crowd's reaction to the goal being scored and the drums start up as well. It's funny. Australian crowds don't deal well with players falling over and pretending to be hurt, so after the Brazil goalie fell over a few times, the crowd had definitely had enough, and here's some of the audio of that, with the crowd encouraging her to leave the field. It was certainly a very different experience compared to the usual football games and occasional cricket games that we attend. It was definitely a little similar to the EPL style English soccer vibe style English soccer vibe, but maybe even with a little bit more spirit. I was very surprised, so it was a fun day.

Jacquie Joy:

It sounds like walking around your amazing neighborhood at the moment is your go-to fitness move. I've switched my daily program up a bit and have added in some trampoline work. You might have seen the picture of our trampoline in some of the backyard photos. It's rather large. It is a big square, four meter by four meter size trampoline which is 13 by 13 feet, and we put a basketball net inside there as well. So I've just been spending time in there about 10 minutes a day throwing hoops, jumping around. I can feel my thighs getting stronger and it doesn't even feel like exercise. So that's been super fun and beneficial. I was noticing the other day carrying boxes up and downstairs and I did it with ease and did it rather quickly, so very happy about that. The other thing worth mentioning is I've also increased my low back stretches the really easy ones where you just lay on your back and bring your leg across your body and I'm feeling so much well less does that make sense? I'm feeling much less. I'm feeling a lot less bloated like big time, so that's been a great hack for me as well. I don't know if you do them. I don't think you have bloating issues, however, so that's been super helpful for me.

Jacquie Joy:

It was super interesting to hear about the snail cream from Korea. Very fascinating and seems like a popular trend at the moment and is getting great reviews. I did read a little bit more about it and I have followed the trend and have bought some and will let you know when it arrives. I'm not keen to use it on my face as such because, as you said, it sounds really gooey. I don't know what the texture of it is going to be like. However, I thought I would try some on a body part that is not my face first up and see how it feels. It does have over 70,000 very positive reviews on Amazon and apparently gives the glass skin look. So we shall see.

Jacquie Joy:

It does sound intriguing and when I'm using it I will not think about what it's actually made from. So thanks for that tip. It sounds like or like myself you have a good little skin routine going. I mean, when you find the products that suit you, you tend to not change, but it's occasionally interesting just to try something new and see if you're missing out on something. And see if you're missing out on something, even if it does sound a bit gross. Anyway, time to sign off. I'm going to take the dog for a very quick walk before getting back into some work. I hope you enjoy your special dinner out tonight and enjoy the rest of your week, looking forward to chatting soon and take care as always. And bye for now, thank you.