Nothing to get up for this morning – bliss 🙂
Ady’s friend Tom had given us a real Christmas tree (via his job, he works for the company who supply Homebase so we got a sample one, it’s a bit bottom heavy and could probably do with a trim but it’s free and smells gorgeous) so Ady had brought it in and stuck it in a bucket of water. It was still all closed up from the cold outside and being in a net so needed to relax into the warmth of the room before decorating.
Both Davies and Scarlett are still suffering Camp Cold – Scarlett is at coughing and looking a bit peaky stage, Davies is still in full on feeling crap and needing to lie about on the sofa so we’d decided very early on we wouldn’t bother with swimming today meaning there was no need to leave the house.
I spent some time finishing off some online stuff with the intention of clearing my email inbox, almost there :).
Davies was having a dvd day – he watched Toy Story 3, Flushed Away, How to train your dragon and various dvd extras. Scarlett played with her playmobile stuff and I went off to do some festive baking. I started with gingerbread mix and then stuck some shortbread mix in. I’d not been thinking though as I’d put the shortbread mix on to make some basic biscuits and picked the recipe I use to add stuff like lavender to which makes a lovely pressed into the tin shortbread but is no good for rolling out for biscuits.
Both the children wandered in whilst I was doing it and both stopped to help for a while, cutting out stuff or brushing with glaze before wandering back out again. Every year I use the same gingerbread recipe and am surprised by how many biscuits it makes! This year it did all the biscuits for a nativity cookie cutter set I had and several trays of hearts, stars and plenty of cut out biscuits to stick boiled sweets in the middle of to make stained glass window biscuits.
I used the mistake shortbread to make a shortbread round and then made several batches of pastry to make 5 dozen mincepies which used up all of my home made mincemeat reserves. I have ingredients for more and want to make some mincemeat muffins though so might try and do that tomorrow. I made some icing and gave Davies and Scarlett the biscuits, a bowl of icing and another of sprinkles and set them to task on decorating them while I did the nativity – it needs some writing icing to finish it of nicely though.
While the mince pies were cooking I split loads of firewood, made some late lunch for the kids and then came and sat down with them infront of the fire.
We’ve had lots of cuddling up, lots of just enjoying being in a house, with a fire and a sofa and a TV set :). Storing up comfort points for next year when we’ll be exchanging them for adventure points instead ;).
I spent some time creating a ‘best of 2010’ set on flickr in preparation for my round up of the year post and then got all soppy about what a fab life we have and how wonderful our friend are, what a great path we’ve chosen, how lucky our children are to be chasing so many of their dreams and being taken so seriously. I know this has been a really testing year for many of our friends and I have certainly shed many, many tears for their troubles but despite that I look back over a year filled with many happy times too.
Ady came home and we sorted through a loft space that has our Christmas decorations. This year we’ve decided on a very old fashioned look with the tree containing edible decorations (home made biscuits and candy canes) and baubles made from old recycled Christmas cards. We’re leaving the tinsel in the box and have just strung up various Christmas lights around the house and will have lots of candles. In small part this fits with our minimalistic look and the hope of having some prospective tennants come and look at the house but mostly it fits well with the Christmas we will have this year – lower impact, made by us with little waste – a far cry for us from Christmasses past.