That's it for another year!

I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends. Amazingly all the presents got wrapped and food got cooked on time. In a moment of complete insanity I was inspired to make a gingerbread house. I blame Val entirely after reading about her lovely gingerbread house on her blog. It turned out fine and has now been largely demolished and eaten but a word of advice - of all the things you don't want to be doing on Christmas Eve, making a gingerbread house comes in top of the list! Especially when the icing bag splits half way through erecting a wall.



Despite the pressures of house building, we had a lovely Christmas Eve which started with a surprise in the post - this beautiful postcard from Lesley. You can't see the detail properly in the photograph - it is beautifully stitched and looks very festive up on the wall in my hallway. Thank you Lesley!




We then went to friends for lunchtime drinks where I had lots of cuddles with their baby daughter. The afternoon was spent at the Carol concert in the village church and then in the evening it was off to more friends for supper and drinks. Christmas Day was quiet and Stewart and I were at friends for lunch - Having cooked Christmas dinner here in November I managed to avoid cooking another turkey this week. Santa brought lots of lovely things for us all, including these goodies for me. I can't wait to try some of these recipes. I had two other cook books too but suspect my family might have ulterior motives!




An added surprise for Christmas was this layer of goodies in the hamper that we recently won. We checked the box at the time when we got it home but obviously hadn't dug deep enough as we thought it was a meagre layer of biscuits, tea bags etc. However we were using some of the packaging for something else when we discovered this hidden layer which included a bottle of champagne, a bottle of port and four bottles of wine... bonus! It does explain why the box was so heavy!

Yesterday was far from quiet, with all the family and friends back here and we ended up with fifteen for lunch plus two dogs! Lots of fun and laughter and a game of Charades. Needless to say today I've felt good for nothing and have spent a large part of the day flaked out on the sofa browsing through old newspapers and magazines. A fairly typical Christmas and as always I can't believe how quickly it has come and gone. Hope yours was special too!