I set the table with my mother-in-law's tablecloth which has a tartan theme, my family's china, and my grandmother Phoebe's sterling silver. I made napkins rings and placenames for all the guests with their respective tartans. My napkin ring is my grandmother Phoebe's. Her intials are on top and my mother had "Janice" inscribed on the side. There were four napkin rings so" Richard" and "Jim "on incribed on two others.
I made "favours" for each family like a bagpipe with the tartans of McGregor and Penman. The contents are an envelope with trivia and Scottish jokes. a coaster, a Christmas ornament with highland dancers and some Macintosh toffees.
I thought of a lot of people last night who would have loved to have been with us...Don and Elaine, Jim's mom and grandparents, my grandmother Phoebe, Bill Thomas (the supplier of the kilt), and my uncle, Doug Denniston, who got some bagpipes from somewhere and bought a 50 cent paperback on to to play them. It would have been fabulous if he was there to pipe in the haggis but we had to make do with YouTube.
Jim did a wonderful "address to the haggis" and the laddies did a great toast to the lassies and the lassies gave a wonderful toast as well.
Thanks so much to our wonderful friends who made it all happen!
Dave guarding the haggis with his father-in-law's sword from when he did highland dancing. Jim's tie is a French theme. It was a tie of Don Curling who started our tradition of celebrating Robbie Burns.
Dave and Cec doing the "toast to the lassies".
Carol, Donna, and Linda doing the "reply to the laddies".
Linda did a great blog post which also has a video of Jim doing the address to the haggis.
Jim's adddress to the haggis:
