Christmas this year for us in Mexico.

As many North Americans, we are used to Christmas over the years surrounded by family and friends to whom we share gifts after much searching for the perfect gift for each person often at great expence.

Well this year, being far away from our children, our son in Japan and our daughter in San Francisco we had a very different Christmas. Oh yes, there was the usual round of afternoon parties, one after the other at different friends’ homes where we enjoyed visiting with new and old friends and savouring delicacies.

Here begins the real difference. Being in real estate over the year gives us the opportunity to meet new people and make new friends. We like to thank those who have made our year rewarding personally and financially; our buyers and sellers, the Hernandez office staff and the Birds of Paradise employees.

We like to give a bit of ourselves, so we made baskets filled with a few of our favourite things for our clients. The baskets cost us little to prepare financially. What they did cost was only the fun time creating them.

The search for appropriate sized baskets took us to Tlaquepaque, always a fun spot to shop, especially in the Christmas Season. We paired up with one of our new clients and all had a great day. Linda also found vanilla beans there (which can be elusive) – they were used in her “Drunken Prunes” recipe. Small jams jars were collected over the year for this recipe, the lids topped with home made labels. They were used as hostess gifts over the season.

Linda found a “Friendship Soup” recipe on one of her favourite web sites and set about collecting 1 quart jars from “Classico” spaghetti sauce. We even bought a few extra which we emptied into other jars, as they are perfect for the job! The soup mix makes 16 servings and has 7 variations. We printed recipe cards for one of the variations – “Thai Shrimp Soup”. Home made “Gourmet Spice Rubs”, Linda’s Mom’s shortbread recipe cookies, small liquors gathered over the year at different consumer shows, round out the contents of the baskets.

Nothing fancy, just “A few of our Favourite Things” for special people. Wrapping the baskets in green cellophane decorated with golden ribbon and a personal tag finished the project and we were off Christmas week delivering them to our new friends. This is fun and gives us another chance to get together and see if all is well.

If you would like the soup recipe give us a call or ask us on our website. For the staff we searched out boxes of chocolates and tins of cookies.

This is only the personal side of Christmas - the sights and sounds of Mexico at this time of year are something else to behold. We love it!!

All the best of 2010 to each and every one of you.

Sincerely, Linda and Don