Friendsmas

I was thinking about Christmas today and wondered what it will look like this year. With everything going on in the world it may be a very different Christmas to what we normally expect We may not be able to spend time with our loved ones like we do every year. Our traditions may have to be set aside. I started to think about what we did with our friends last year. I thought I would share it with you all. It may be a way for you to do something fun and special for Christmas to help with not being able to see your family. Friendsmas!

I met my friend Faye when we both worked for a law firm in Surfers Paradise many many years ago. Our kids have grown up together and we consider them family. You are sure to see them pop up on here from time to time. Every year we have an early Christmas celebration together. Last year I wanted to do something special for them and have a bit of fun. To try something different to the traditional way we spend Christmas. Both families are massive Friends fans so when Tony came home with the Friends lego set my mind started ticking. Of course I turned to Pinterest and saw some different ways to hold “Friendsmas”. I knew they would love it so I threw myself in to finding as many ideas as I could for our very different Christmas!

Decorations

To begin with I purchased a Friends font package on Etsy. Unfortunately it’s not available at the moment so I can’t link it. The package also contained some classic Friends images like the door frame, some quotes, the Central Perk logo amonst other things. This allowed me to make two large banners “Merry” and “Friendsmas”. I began by printing each letter and a coloured dot on an A4 piece of paper. After that I cut a point on each page as shown in the pictures below. This font package also allowed me to type up some quotes and sayings from the show as you can see in the photos.

Gift Bags

Whenever I host a Christmas party I love to give my guests a bag of home made goodies for them to take home. I wanted Friendsmas to be the same. Luckily I had some white gift bags leftover from a previous Christmas and there was enough to use for this occasion. My go to for gift bags is usually Ebay as you can get them in lots of 50 and it makes them very economical.

To fill the gift bags I included some chocolates, I purchased from Aldi, with special covers I ordered from Etsy. This order also included the thank you tags I used. Again, unfortunately I cannot link these as they’re no longer available, they were fantastic and so inexpensive. I also included some Nestle Tollhouse Cookies and I found the recipe here. Another item I included was some purchased caramels which I rewrapped individually as Monicas Candy (little pieces of heaven!!). A handmade Friends themed Christmas Card was also included in the bag. I forgot to take photographs of the items included in the gift bag. You will have to imagine a cellophane bag filled with cookies and tagged Nestle Tollhouse etc 🤪!!!

Starters for Friendsmas

When it came to the food, I went all out to try and capture a lot of the foods that featured in the show. These foods were not necessarily Christmas foods as I know it but it was still yummy!

We started the evening on the pool deck where it was help yourself food:

• Ross’s Margaritas. I decided to go with an Hawaiian Margarita that I found here. It was really good.
• Ross’s fajitas. My shredded chicken recipe can be found here. I served this with tortillas, grated cheese and shredded lettuce.
• Monica’s Mokolate. I used Cadbury Creations chocolate because it had the pop rocks in it. You could use any chocolate you like though.
• Basket of Ross’s mini muffins. I didn’t spend too much time on these. They were really more for decoration rather than eating. So I simply purchased a packet mix.
• Joey’s sandwiches. I made a simple meatball in tomato sauce weeks ahead and froze them ready for the day. To keep them small I purchased cook at home dinner rolls that had the correct shape.
• Monicas quiches with the blue fingernail. For these I used my go to mini quiche recipe which I made and froze. I then reheated them on the night and placed some plastic blue fingernails on top.

Main Meal

The first thing I wanted to sort out for the main meal was the turkey that ended up on Monica’s head. As there would only be 8 of us I didn’t want to cook a full turkey but I still wanted that look. I went with a nice sized organic chicken instead. I found a great recipe on Better Homes and Gardens. The chicken is baked on top of a loaf of garlic bread, delicious! You can find it here. I used a small red cup for the hat and found a pair of gold glasses in the dress up section of Stacks Variety Store.

Next up I had to have the three different types potatoes.

• Tator Tots for Joey. These were easy I just brought the frozen ones.
• Mashed potatoes with lumps for Ross. I just boiled potatoes, added some butter and salt and roughly mashed to keep some lumps.
• Whipped Potatoes with peas and onions. This one was also pretty easy. Boil up your potatoes. While they are boiling fry some onions slowly in butter until soft, then add in frozen peas, cook on low until the peas are soft. Once the potatoes are cooked add some butter and milk and whip with a stick blender.

I decided to use the Lego as part of the main meal fun. The kit had 5 different bags which made up separate sections of the finished product. I decided to put the unopened bags in glass bowls on the table. After we had all eaten we would split in to teams of two. Each team would complete their section and we would all finish the last one and join them all together. It worked out perfectly and we had a lot of fun doing it.

Dessert

We had dessert outside under the tree which was really nice to end the night. Of course a friends themed Christmas would not be complete without Rachel’s triffle. I found a great recipe on Brendid.com. It really looked the part but thankfully was delicious too.

I also included cheesecake (the one with all the cheesecake). White Chocolate was my flavour choice this time and this recipe found on TamingTwins was really good.

We ended the night with a group rendition of Smelly Cat which was hilarious and a lot of fun. So there you have it friends, if you’re looking for something a little different this year give Friendsmas a go, I’m sure you will love it. Let me know how it goes.