Christmas Day in Saltwell Park

Christmas Eve

It's become a tradition on Christmas Eve to set up some landing lights (tea lights in glass jars) down the front path, so Father Christmas can see where he's going. We also scatter some glittery reindeer food...

...and inside there's also a glass of whisky and a mince pie, to reward Father Christmas for coming down our non-existent chimney. He really is rather good at getting past the gas flue and the chipboard.

Christmas!

As is traditional, we've made our gingerbread house (when I say made, I don't mean I made the whole thing - I cheated and bought the sides/roof/chimney in IKEA). We used royal icing to stick it together, and then attached a whole load of sweeties to the roof. The girl liked that bit very much.

It does seem to be listing slightly, and a week on, the smarties on the roof have turned suspiciously white. I suspect the cat, who has a record of previous offences.

In other news, M's also written a letter to Santa. Apparently she wants some shoes for her (Barbie-sized) riders. Bless.

Too much snow

I may have had enough of the snow now. I've got Christmas cards to write, presents to wrap, and a small girl to shoehorn into a costume for next week's nativity play at school. Enough with the snowflakes!

Other things I haven't had chance to do yet (mostly food-related):

• an exciting peanut butter taste text (the nice people over at Whole Earth have sent us some to review...but the sledging has kind of got in the way a bit)
• make our Christmas cake (I'm going back to the 2008 version)
• build the annual IKEA gingerbread house (learning from previous years, we won't be putting smarties on the roof, as the cat likes to lick them!)
• make mince pies (we did the mincemeat on stir up Sunday)
• make some crafty crackers (although this year, we'll be using tissue paper - it took superhuman levels of strength to pull last year's lot)

Eek. That's quite a lot to get done over the next couple of weeks...

Christmas house

Recipe (such as it is) over at Recipes for Millie.

Decorations (part III)

Terrible pic (mobile phone again), but you get the idea...

UPDATE: recipe here

Decorations (part II)

(or how to entertain your small child on a cold and damp afternoon no 4,167)

Decorations (part 1)

(or how to make your dining room look like Top of the Pops)

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree...

...how spooky are your branches.

And angels...


This just goes to show the dangers of taking pictures on a dodgy mobile phone, rather than being bothered to get the actual camera out.

This is just M's tree - the small one that goes in the living room. We're off to the Forestry Commission tent at IKEA soon to get the large one for the dining room that gets decorated in the tasteful stuff. Hopefully this year we'll pick one that isn't too enormous...we always think it'll be fine, and then I end up sitting in the middle of a forest in the car on the way home.

Last year we really thought we'd cracked it - the tree fitted in lengthways; I didn't have needles up my nose...and then we got it home and it turned out to be about 7ft wide as well as tall.

This year I'm taking my measuring tape.

Dear Santa,

Here is a picture of you, Mrs Santa, Rudolph and Glitzen the Reindeer. We've posted it to you (at Santa's Grotto, Reindeerland, SAN TA1), and we hope you like it enough to reply...

It's amazing what you will do to keep a three-year-old amused on a damp, cold afternoon. Let's hope Santa's impressed...

(and yes, I know it's not Glitzen, but M insisted).

Christmas is coming...

It's been a few days of feeling Christmassy (as well as stress about the sheer amount of work that has to be finished by then).

But we now have a Christmas cake - recipe over here at Recipes for Millie - which looks rather spiffing. The new silicon tin (Lidl's versions are brilliant, and come in at under £3) is a marvel. No more faffing about with all that baking parchment.


And yesterday we trundled up to Kielder to take part in the Northumberland Lights 2008 installation, Out of Water. It was a fantastic, magical experience, albeit a little eerie to be wandering around the woods in the dark. I loved the illuminated bridge, whose steel ropes 'twanged' a tune, and the immensely tall pine trees, lit from below to look like totem poles.

The moon rose over Kielder Water during our walk, and you could see for miles across the water. It was so beautiful, we made a resolution to go back up there in the summer, and have another look in daylight.

Oops. I appear to have mislaid my life. Hang on...there it is, drowning under a sea of work.

I'm temporarily relocated for the evening, surrounded by a roaring log fire, two sleeping children and a snoring cat. Sadly, the work appears to have come with me, so I'm procrastinating by reading the news online and blogging.

You didn't miss much over Christmas. Not that Christmas was terrible, far from it. Lots of presents to send the small one delirious (it really is fun pretending that Santa ate the mince pies, and drank all the whisky), a rattling good time visiting hordes of rellies, and a very sweet Christmas day that involved a bracing walk in the park battling the ravenous geese. But nothing of any national importance to report.

In fact, not much on the telly either. Dr Who not bad, Ballet Shoes ok (but can't compare to the original), and the half hour I watched of Finding Nemo reminded me how much I liked it the first time round. Oh, and Alesha deserved to win Strictly Come Dancing, in this household's opinion. I'm going to miss getting dressed up in my sparkly shoes (it's mandatory in our house) on a Saturday night.

Bah, humbug: cards part II

As you all know, I love writing Christmas cards and was therefore ecstatic when I was handed a list of 20-odd two-year-olds at M's nursery, who all apparently expected them. Needless to say, none will be forthcoming as (a) I've run out of Christmas cards and (b) I really will lose the will to live. At the risk of sounding 97, what is the world coming to?

It's nearly Christmas, you know

so it's time to start saving up for the ultimate in Christmas decorations...Fortnum and Mason's The Paragon Crackers.

Guaranteed to make your guests wince, if only at the stupidity of paying £1,000 for six glorified loo rolls. You do get "sumptuous hand-quilted fabric with real pearl detail" and some rather fantastic "python-print chocolate-coloured keep sake boxes". Sadly, no mention of party hats or jokes.

Update: look, even her maj goes for the budget option.