Christmas in Dubai #HDYGG?

Yes, they do, do Christmas in Dubai, big time, it is huge and more importantly you will be wished a Happy Christmas in Dubai. They just don't play carols and you can buy a nativity set in the supermarkets and listen to Slade and Jingle Bells in public all day long if you want.

You can take the children to see Santa, in fact you can take your dog to see Santa, you can buy real trees, fake trees, pre decorated trees, stick on the wall trees.

This is our tree, we've had it for 6 years and it was inherited from my MIL, you'd never think it was in the high 20s here, in the day and it's the middle of winter.

The presents are piling up and there is money for the kids

Bob and Pushkins are waiting patiently for Christmas Day

This is the other tree, you can't see in the photo, as there is so much tinsel and too much sunlight, but the tree is purple.

Here are the trees I've seen so far this year in Dubai, not many and no real ones, but at £162 for an 8ft 'live' Christmas tree, I'll be sticking to the artificial ones. Don't think I've ever bought a 'real' tree.

Carrefour at The Mall of the Emirates

Mall of the Emirates

Jumeria Beach Residence

 There were dancers, gymnasts, jugglers and carols being sung also.

At the doctors

Tesco

Bringing the outdoors in, in Dubai with #HDYGG

I'm currently in the UK and enjoying the weather, to be honest it's just been too hot in Dubai since the  end of May when the temperature reached 50c. I escaped it for 3 weeks with a trip to Canada, but summer has just been so long and it's getting me down. The humidity is just awful at the moment, we wake up in the mornings to this. Condensation on the outside of the windows. 

Temperature 32c, feels like 46c and 85% humidity.

The week after the teen returned to the UK I felt like I was just hanging around waiting for my flight to the UK. I was housebound and fed up so I decided to go out, get out the house and stay indoors somewhere else. So I got hubby to drop me at the Mall of Emirates for a couple of hours while he went to work.

The mall is very light and open, it does have a feeling of being outside, with the glass domed roof, the tiles and water fountain and of course the air conditioning, but the reality is, you are still indoors.

There are plenty of flowers in the mall, but I'm afraid most of them were artificial and disappointing at that, they don't even look remotely real.

Apart from the restaurants and food halls, there is absolute no where to sit. Some of the other malls have comfy chairs, with power points where you can just sit and relax, without the pressure of having something to eat or the noise generated in the food hall.

So I decided to explore the shops after my 2nd cup of coffee and see what they had to offer in the way of flowers.

I fell in love with Zara Home, I spent most of my visit in there, but came home empty handed. I just couldn't decide what I needed, other than all of it.

Harvey Nichols window displays were pretty spectaluar and they were focusing on autumn fashions. I can only assume that their main clientele are from outside the UAE or travel frequently to colder climate. I loved the use of the roses in the displays. Unfortunatley, photography is difficult with all the artificial lighting in the mall and reflection of the other shops.

Dior are opening a new store and rather than use plain hoarding they had decorated it with beautiful flowers.

There were lots of lovely floral patterns around and I bought some of these wall stickers for another project I'm working on and almost bought one of the bags, but was saved by not being able to make up my mind on which one to have.

Of course Dubai do everything big and well. They even managed to bring a ski slope indoors.

I'm now trying to see if I can find this t shirt in a big enough child's size as i think it sums up all the hard work that is put into creating a garden.