Out of the habit

Is Christmas really over?

I’m out of the habit of blogging regularly and finding it hard to get inspiration… so I thought I’d do that old trick of just typing away – stream of consciousness like – and see what happens.

I love hosting Christmas but I also love my house back to normal the day after Christmas after all the empties have been taken out to the recycling and the dishes finally done, extra tables hidden away and the crunchy floor cleaned.

In the days since we’ve been chilling out the back lolling on the couches under the patio we built last year, occasionally jumping in the pool to bring down the core body temp (it is over 40 every day for the next four), lighting the candles in the evening and enjoying the odd glass of wine.

It’s been lovely having my brother and his family to stay too.  Their little one is uber-cute.  Just the cutest 3-year-old ever.  And even though I know I’m going to be approached again and again to play animal matches, or go for a swim, or watch the spelling game stars I don’t care because she is so adorable.

They’ve gone down south for a few days now and the house seems strangely empty.

This year we did a couple of things to encourage “groupness”.

Groupness is a term I picked up from a facilitation course this year.  Basically when you have a new grouping of people it’s important to get them to interact quickly and share.  Sharing is more likely if the peeps feel part of a group.

Groupness can be created in any number of ways…

For example… name tags… not really appropriate for family dinner…

This year we did souvenir holiday teeshirts designed by my artist brother…

And a dancing video.

If you’ve seen Where the Hell is Matt? you will know the inspiration.

I asked my invited guests and extended family that weren’t coming to the evening to send in snippets of video of themselves so that I could mash them into a video to play on the night.

That way peeps who couldn’t come would still be part of the group… and those who were there would feel part of the group – having gone through the shared experience (pain and humiliation?) of dancing in public.

I guess I’m an extrovert because I loved doing the dancing videos, others felt it wasn’t such a cool thing, but everyone sent something in.

Unfortunately I ran out of time but I delegated (another management technique) to my niece (not the 3-year old) and the video was lovely.

Even the too-cool-for-school teens admitted it was fun in the end and I think – should I ask them to participate in one of my crazy groupness exercises next time – they might find it easier to say yes, lets!

UPDATE: Here is the link to the video.

OMG.  I’m at the end of a post and I had something to say after all.

Maybe the habit is stronger than I thought…

Tagged as: 2012, Christmas, dancing, tee-shirts, video