This year our annual “Sibling Supper” is on Saturday November 21^st! And it’s our 8^th supper and our 7^th supper with the gifts!!!

Its da Bruvva’s turn to play host, and my turn to supply dessert- so I am furiously looking for a gourmet cupcake recipe to do for our pudding. I have so many divine recipes I’m having a hard time choosing!!

I also still need to find a gift! 😮 Usually I have my rotten kitsch present sorted MONTHS before the time… but this year I haven’t bought anything yet. I’ve seen a few that may be worthy, but nothing really awesome yet…

So here’s a bit of an explanation of why we have our annual dinner.

Since my siblings- sister B, sister C & da Bruvva all have significant others’ and or children- Christmas is inevitably now shared with their direct family and their in-laws. Which means no more big family Christmases like we had when we were kids. And of course, there is a strong possibility every year that we won’t all be together on Christmas day.

I then had an idea to have an annual “Sibling Supper”.

I know. I have these little flashes of brilliance every now and then. And of course “it” makes it all about me again, so I win.

The dinner is just the four of us- no kids and no partners- and each year one of us hosts it and decorates a dinner table, and we each contribute something different to the meal.

Then a few years ago I read a Dean Koontz* book about a guy who could not go into the sun or even strong light- I think it was called “Fear Nothing” but I’m not too sure. Anyway, the main character in the story had a friend who was a night owl and the two of them would give each other the ugliest and most impractical gifts they could find for Christmas and birthdays. It was a long standing competition with them.

Now we do the same!

Because we are a big family Christmas can get horribly expensive- so we no longer buy Christmas presents for each other, we only buy for the kids and for our partners. And for our sibling supper, each of us buys just one gift- the ugliest, kakkest, kitchest, corniest thing we can possibly find, and then we pull names from a hat to decide who gets which gift. It’s turned into a huge competition with us shopping months in advance and keeping it a huge secret! We now even have a floating trophy that is awarded to the person who found the worst gift in each year.

The “rules” state that your gift has to be prominently on display in your house for one year, and if it gets broken it has to be mended! When you get your new gift, you can toss the old one.

Of course, kitsch is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone has different taste… so occasionally someone gets something they actually like- even if the giver thinks it’s dreadful! 😀

Oh, and when I do post the photos of the party, please don’t think that anything we label as kitsch and dreadful is an attack on anyone’s personal taste…

You can read about the previous sibling supper’s here, here, here, here, here and here (hhmmm… I sound like the raccoon in “Over The Hedge”).

*Thanx for the correction Sleepy Jane