The lead-up to Christmas tends to feel like a race. I galloped and galloped and made it past the post with no major disasters but of course, now I have a cold.
Do you do this? Get sick as soon as the pressure's off? I can pretty much set my clock by it. So here I am in the lull between Christmas and normal life... in bed, drugged up, blowing my nose... Oh well, at least it's forcing me to rest. I guess that's the point.
It's also quite nice to have some fallow time to acknowledge the change of season. All the frantic Christmas festivity is over. All five advent candles have been lit and been snuffed. Winter solstice has been. We're now into proper winter (it's suddenly gotten colder) with the creep towards spring, more daylight, a few hardly bulbs peeking through the soil and the bloom into full summer.
Awww... look at her face!
I have a massive list of chores that I could be doing on in my few days off, but I'm not able to do any of them.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll be up to mattress shopping as our landlord's mattress has really given up the ghost. We got Christmas money to go towards a new mattress and we're itching to spend it. It will be lovely to have a comfy bed.
I'm also looking forward to be healthy enough to get on the wagon of eating nothing but vegetables and taking a daily run. Well, I exaggerate somewhat, but I am a big blob at the moment and need to indulge in the traditional January masochism. Soon, my pretty, pretty...
Ah, the last weekend of sanity before Christmas... We very deliberately kept it low key and thusly had a lovely weekend. Highlights?
Christmas market
There is a market that pops up near our house every few months. This weekend was a particularly big one and there was a lovely singer doing her own take on a range of songs from folk songs to carols and 90's pop songs. We had lunch with a friend and snapped up some local 'Wife of Bath' cheese to take for Christmas. We also got some handmade pies (chicken, bacon and leek) and some locally roasted and ground coffee. I'd been stalking a lovely statement necklace with fuschia and emerald green beads on a brass chain so I *suggested* to my husband that it'd make a good Christmas present.
It was sunny, there was mulled wine and handmade mince pies... Lovely.
Cathedral service
Our normal church was having a kids service so we popped into the cathedral. It's so festive! The choir in robes and ruffs, lighting the advent candle, 10 foot Christmas trees up the front. The only thing I kind of wish they did was incense, but they're not as 'high church' as that.
Also, WHY is it that churches uniformly don't take the opportunity of having more lovely Advent carols? "O Come, O come Emmanuel" is my favourite Christmas song and I haven't had the opportunity of singing it yet this year.
Blaise Castle Estate and Blaise Hamlet
We thought we'd have another go at actually finding the castle in this large local park. We spent a couple of hours walking about there in summer and managed to totally miss the castle.
This time we followed the signs carefully and (after a lovely scenic walk through the woods and several delightful encounters with squirrels) found our way to the top of the hill. There is a surprisingly small 'castle' built on the hill in the 1700s at the request of the rich landowner.
We also had a quick wander around the green of Blaise Hamlet. There are nine of the most riDICulously cute cottages you could imagine. Don't they look like Hobbit holes? You can see some more here.
They were built for pensioners of the Harford family who owned the estate. Imagine being so rich that the housing for your aged servants is designed by a famous architect! (John Nash, in case you're interested). They're all owned by The National Trust now but are still lived in by a few very lucky people.
On our way back to the car we stopped in at the cafe and got pulled (not at all reluctantly) into a lovely carol sing-a-long. There was quite a competant pianist and a group of about 15 from (I found out later) the local church. I had great fun doing the descants on the final verse of carols like "Once in Royal David's City" and doing the male king/ female page thing in "Good King Wenceslas".
Then we mulled lots of cider and ate the pies from the market for dinner with lots of gravy and steamed veg.
What did you do in the weekend? Nice festive things or are you just feeling frazzled?
So, I'm really not a domestic goddess. I bake roughly around twice a year, Christmas being one of the times that I bestir myself to get out the mixing bowls and baking trays.
This weekend the magic will happen, but I'm missing my favourite Christmas biscuit recipe! My friend always used to make them and they're delicious! Made with lots of spices, orange zest and juice, they're soft yet crisp. They're lovely when drizzled with lemon icing... mmm... I'm hungry now!
I'll have to experiment with a new recipe and see how that works out. Anyone got any suggestions?
This Hairy Bikers biscuit recipe sounds good, but we're seeing people at Christmas who don't like candied peel, so maybe not.
This one looks nice and simple, but I'd definitely add a bit of nutmeg and ground cloves as well as the cinnamon and ginger. Spices = Christmas for me.
I like the sound of everything that Nigel Slater is recommending - especially the mulled pear cider! I like the cardamon in the biscuits but they sound like they'd be a bit too dry and crisp for me. I like my Christmas biscuits a little soft in the middle.
Well, I'll give one of them a try and see how I go - wish me luck!
For those who are wondering, a 2 by 4 is a wood used in building houses - I think it used to be two inches high by four inches wide. In New Zealand it's kind of pronounced as one word i.e. toobafor.
Anyway, I feel rather like I've been walloped with one. I am under a LOT of pressure at work with long days of travel and far more work than I can cover in the time I have. Yesterday was a particularly full-on day and by the end of it, I was a zombie.
I ate dinner in front of Dr Who then watched Sherlock (mmm... Cumberbatch, so soothing) and had a bath with lavender oil so I felt a bit more human but still... This weekend is kind of feeling like the eye of the storm.
I'm sitting in an incredibly messy room with chores that need doing all around me, including some Christmas prep.
Nontheless, it's a beautiful, still morning with blue(ish) skies and goldfinches tweeting in the trees outside. A couple of local cats popped in the window for cuddles and to play with our Christmas ornaments for a bit this morning. And there is always coffee. I will try to use these couple of days to rest and refresh myself a bit for the big push on to the holidays.
So, that's enough from me. Enjoy your weekends, All!
I don't know about you, but December madness has struck early for me this year - super-busy at work, lots of travel, getting presents and cards sorted in time for postal deadlines... it's all go and I'm getting a bit stressed.
That said, I also want to enjoy the lovely festive-ness of December in England. The run up to Christmas is so lovely with lights, Christmas markets, roasted chesnuts and mulled wine and holly wreaths and robins etc.
We've got a Christmas market tomorrow so that should be useful for presents. I like to get lovely crafted things instead of mass produced plastic stuff from the mall.
There are also several other lovely festive thing that I really want to try and squeeze into December like outdoor iceskating. They have some plastic-y waxy fake ice 'cos it's really not cold enough to keep ice frozen, but still, it seems like fun. I used to enjoy indoor iceskating as a child and teenager in New Zealand.
There's a big rink out at the mall in Cribbs Causeway or there's a smaller one in the town centre. Hopefully I'll manage to get out on one of them for a bit of a blat one evening in December.
There are lots of lovely plays, pantos, musicals, concerts and general performance things on, but the one I really want to go to involves Moomins. I've loved the Tove Jansson books since I was a child and still love them now. The Bath Theatre Royal have a puppet performance called "Moominland Midwinter". You can see a bit more about it in this article. The performance seems mainly aimed at children, but I'm going to be there with bells on! (Well, not literally, that might get a bit distracting!)
The last thing that I'd really like to go to is Westonbirt Aboretum's Christmas Lights trail. It looks absolutely beautiful and I do love a good tree. We went to Westonbirt last autumn to enjoy the leaves. Though we were slightly late for the peak colour, we still had a lovely day out tromping around the forest trails. The only thing I worry about is how crowded it might be. Noisy crowds would really spoil the atmosphere. Still, I think I'll give it a go.
I'll let you know how my ambitious December plans pan out... wish me luck and especially sanity between now and the 25th!
Blah, blah, it happens earlier every year... personally it doesn't bug me that Christmas decorations and food start appearing in the shops in September, but I did take pictures of some particularly cute decorations and also some particularly odd ones. On the cute side, Butlers had various woodland creatures made of glass to hang from your tree...
Then there were the ones that headed a bit further out into the wilds of Strangeland... I can see some kids loving the dinosaur one (though it wouldn't show up well in a green tree), but I think the gerkins are a bit pointless. The hamburger one would just make me want a Big Mac!
Then finally, there are the 'you have way too much money and should really give it to charity instead of buying this shit' products. I'm pretty sure I remember this deer being nearly 100 pounds and the large figure with the head of a Scotty dog was around 70 pounds. They were both about four feet high so you'd need a decent sized room to put them in but I guess with that much cash to splash around, that wouldn't be a problem!
So, are you making a list and checking it twice yet? Do you buy extra decorations each year or stick to the same old traditional ones? Fancy any of the above for your tree?
.JPG)
