A Little Christmas Picnic on the Beach!
Let’s clear up something straight away: This is more suited for a warmer climate.
Despite recently going on vacation to beautiful sunshine-land Mexico, me and my romantic self thought it would be such a wonderful idea to replicate the same idea here at home. In the pacific northwest. Is romantic the word for that? Well, yes. At least it was for us. However, maybe some more colourful words like “adventure” or “creative” would also be used to supplement the description!
I filled a thermos full of some delicious coffee and real Bailey’s (reserved for very special occasions as the real stuff is, as you likely know, VERY expensive, but you could also do hot chocolate or tea?), croissants filled with cheese and meat, some of my infamous homemade Hamburger soup, and our little camping chairs. Add the propane fireplace and we were ready to go off we went to the beach!
We are so very lucky where we live (as I have said many times) that we live close to the ocean. In fact, if you read about our Carol Ship Date (click to read it!), you would know we have a view of the ocean from our home. So technically, the beach is only a short drive away! A very cold, frigid, pacific northwest beach, but a beach nonetheless! As well, we are retired so we can plan such an event for a weekday, definitely affecting how many visitors we will have at our picnic. I must say that it was delightfully quiet! We took our portable propane fireplace, set ourselves up pretty quickly and breathed in the beautiful ocean air for about an hour and a half as we ate, told stories and just enjoyed ourselves and each other, Lovely the dog, the yummy food and drink and the beautiful oceanside scenery!
We talked about how special this was - remembering so many years ago, even before we were married, when we went on our first winter picnic in the snow! At that time we had our dog Jasper, an amazing golden retriever, and we stayed for about 3 hours with a little hibachi fire doing almost exactly what we did today. It was so great to reminisce about that time together!
We have thought about trying to reproduce that event many times, but I think we both agreed that it is far better to switch it up a bit - because a new adventure doesn’t hold the same expectations as wonderful memories, and it adds to the story of romance.
So here’s the feedback - wear gloves - my hands would have been way too cold to have enjoyed this experience as much as I did with gloves. Ditto for a hat. I brought along a couple of sheepskins to put on the chairs as my rear end gets cold quick. One our dog as well. And when we did get home, we jumped into the hot tub and warmed right back up - what a fun afternoon!