Tag Archives: kara gribble

Christmas in Whangarei

Leave a reply

We have the extreme pleasure of celebrating Christmas in Whangarei.  Our first  stop is the Crane Road Christmas Tree Farm with our friends Kara and Sharron.

They have several hundred trees growing here.  You can purchase any tree with a tag on it. Of course I found several smaller trees that I’d love to bring back to the boat.  Alas, they were not for sale.

Before you shop, the helpers give you a very long stick with a Santa hat on the end.  You use this stick to notify the helpers once you have selected your tree. 

Santa made an early trip to Whangarei so we all took photos with him. Sharron and Kara in the back with me, Santa and Matt in the front.

Christmas on the Boat

This was almost the first Christmas where I did not decorate.  Almost.  The boat is in complete chaos with workers coming in out sanding, grinding, and painting.  There is barely any spare spots for decor.

However, I just couldn’t let the holiday come without my old friends.  So, I brought out a few decorations and Matt hung our Christmas lights outside.  It made me feel so much happier!

Cookie Baking Day

As per tradition, I spend several days preparing (6) different cookie dough recipes.  My family started the cookie baking day tradition when I was little.  It has been great fun and a challenge trying to continue it while on the boat.  But I was determined to do it again this year – even though we are on the hard and our salon/galley is a complete mess.

Candy Cane Kisses, , peppermint snowballs, chocolate mint cookies, gingerbread, and toffee. Total of 700 cookies not counting the sugar cookies.

Kara and Lyndsey came over to help me decorate the sugar cookies. All 200 of them!

Town Basin Christmas Light Competition

Each year the Town Basin Marina hosts a competition of lights between all of the boats.  There are several prizes for best overall boat, best foreign boat, best local boat, Judge’s choice and more.  This year I was asked to be a judge.

We started early to get in the spirit…

It was really nice to see the marina boats step up their game. A lot more boats participated and of those they really went out with lights. animatronics, and blow up holiday decor.

It would not be Christmas without Matt being silly.

Christmas at Kara’s House

We had a lovely group of people celebrating at Kara’s house.  We served up a delicious feast, played loads of games and had a jolly good time!

Super grateful for the lovely people that found their way to enjoy Christmas with us.

Our blog posts run 6 weeks behind actual live events.  We celebrated Christmas throughout the month of December 2025.

Be sure to check out all the quirky things to do in Whangarei in our last blog post.

A Whangarei Christmas

Leave a reply

We headed to Town Basin Marina after we splashed.  It was no surprise to find that the Christmas cheer was in full swing!

We quickly put up a few lights and decorations.  Nothing compared to last year.  But I had to do something as I was judging the annual Christmas Boat Light extravaganza.  We did not have much time to do our full decorating, but we showed a little spirit.  if you recall, we won “Overall Best Boat” last year so I had a repuation to uphold.

The judges met for dinner at Local Talent, then headed to a cruiser’s boat called Rewa for drinks while we waited for sunset at 8:34pm!  Yes, it is summer here and the days are long!

Bribing the judges is strongly encouraged so we were gifted with lots of snacks, treats, and cocktails along the way.

Santa is played by Dave on the Rewa, Sharon is in the beautiful red dress next to santa.  The mayor of Whangarei is dressed in his royalty best and Matt was awarded Grinch of the year.

Santa asked that I be the bell ringer.  This was a really heavy and very loud bell.  After an hour everyone was tired of it but Santa insisted I keep ringing it – so ring I did.  That is until the mayor decided it was enough (around 10:30pm) and stuffed it with a shirt to quiet it down.

Lots of boats got into the holiday spirit with music, dancing, lights, and decorations.  It was a really great night!

A week before Christmas I finally got our decorations out.  It was killing me not being in the holiday spirit.  I feel so much better with them out.

Christmas Cookie Galor

I carried on the tradition of baking cookies for friends.  I used to do this with the ladies in our family when I was young and ever since I had my own kitchen I’ve carried out the tradition.  This year I went a little overboard with over 800 cookies (gingerbread, white mice, sugar cookies, peppermint bark), 3 batches of Toffee and 2 batches of caramel fudge!

I put together 12 gift boxes for cruising and local friends!

Myt friend Kara came over to help decorate the large sugar cookies which will be presented on Christmas day.  It was so much fun having her help to decorate – she brought her “A” game!

Of course we had the cookie monster there to help too.

There was some rose wine helping spur our creative side.

And the final product of 60 sugar cookies decorated in a rainbow of colors and designs.

A New Zealand Summer Sunrice from our dock at Town Basin Marina.

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events normally.  But I moved this blog post ahead of the rest so that it coincided with the actual holiday season.