A picture-perfect family Christmas wasn't in the works this year for Joni Mitchell and her newfound daughter.

Despite a reunion earlier this year, Kilauren Gibb, 32, couldn't spend the holidays with her folk-singer mother because Gibb's estranged husband wanted to spend time with their four-year-old son Marlin.

"He wanted to be with the boy when he opened his presents," Myrtle Anderson, Mitchell's mother, said in an interview from Saskatoon.

Instead, Gibb and her son will travel down to Mitchell's home in Los Angeles for New Year's Day and come back through Saskatchewan to visit Anderson.

Gibb and Mitchell, 53, were reunited in March. Gibb's parents did not tell her she was adopted until she was 27 because they didn't want her to feel like an outsider.

Mitchell, 53, has spent most of the holidays finishing up her new album in Los Angeles.

She gave up her daughter shortly after her birth in 1965 while she was first struggling to make a name for herself.

The famous Canadian folk singer admitted in an interview earlier this year that she took a gamble when she gave up her daughter for adoption.

"The main thing at the time was to conceal it," she said.

"The scandal was so intense. A daughter could do nothing more disgraceful. It ruined you in a social sense. You have no idea what the stigma was. It was like you murdered somebody."

Gibb's father is Toronto photographer Brad MacMath, 56.

Mitchell and MacMath met while studying at the Alberta College of Art in Calgary but broke off their relationship shortly before Gibb was born.

Gibb found out that she was adopted five years ago, when she was pregnant with Marlin. She is currently living on student loans while studying desktop publishing at Toronto's George Brown College.

The two share many common features, including blue eyes and blond hair, as well as a fondness for music and art.