Halloween Fun

A lovely day here, about 18 deg C which isn't bad for the last day of October. Managed to completely clear out the greenhouse, wash it inside and out, put up the bubblewrap insulation and then put back the plants that need to overwinter. Now I need to pot up some lettuce, rocket and land cress, plus some pea shoots, to keep us going in winter salad leaves. I love being able to harvest our own leaves at Christmas. Might persuade Hubby to buy another box of living salad from Lidl too, about 40 plants in that, they can go in a planter/grow bag in the greenhouse too.

Finally managed to get to steam the Christmas Puddings, all 8 individual ones (much more sensible). They only took 3 hours, so I can now wrap them ready to store.

Still haven't managed to make the Christmas Cakes though, my Kenwood Chef has appeared from storage, but it needs a good scrub before I can use it. I don't fancy creaming all that butter and sugar and eggs by hand.

Did some pumpkin carving last night, didn't realise that my Mum and Dad have never had a pumpkin lantern before, until I put it in their garden, in view of the patio doors. They were amazed. Oh for the internet and downloadable templates. I tried to pick something that wasn't too scary. Must remember to get a new pumpkin carving blade next year, mine is beginning to bend and is going to suffer from metal fatigue before much longer.

No to get the pumpkin back and turn it into a pumpkin pie, soup, muffins............... etc, well it is a huge pumpkin, huge chunk to Mum too for her to use.

We don't get trick or treaters in the country, I do miss the little kids, but not the older ones who can be quite menacing.

New Hair

We went to a friends wedding at the weekend and my daughter read a poem, she had her hair restyled the night before into a modern bob and wow is she stunning.

Here we are having a bubble blowing contest.  The wedding was in Paignton in Devon at the most beautiful place.

The grounds were vast and so picturesque.

 

I also caught a lovely photo of Laura with our cat Boots, who was being very soft and soppy and not wanting to move.  He wouldn’t get off the chair, so he needed lots of hugs so that Laura could stand up and get on with weighing up the ingredients for the Christmas Pudding and Cakes.

He has been a different cat since we lost his brother earlier in the year, a complete personality change. Sloppy as they come, like velcro when he sees a lap available, but does have a tendency to launch himself on us at 3am every morning, just to let us know that he’s in and needs to warm up.

Christmas prep here we come

Ooops, I've been missing in action, poor blog, it's been forgotten and been left all alone. Well it's time to resurrect and get chatty again.

Half-term has been a relaxing time (I normally have to work, first time the college have allowed us to take a full weeks holiday and boy did I need it).

Today is the start of Christmas preparations. I managed to find some tubs of whole candied peel in Julian Graves earlier in the week, my daughter's current sat on the sofa chopping it into tiny pieces. The fruit is being weighed out and ready to be steeped in brandy overnight. I love Delia's recipe, I don't want to change as it is so good. To make it very special, I've put The Santa Clause on to watch and get us in the Christmas mood, I believe the magic of Christmas gets trapped in the fruit, so we start the process by getting ourselves into Christmas feel to trap even more magic in the mix. Going to make 2 cakes this year, 1 for us, the other for my Mum and Dad.

Will mix together the pudding later, it also needs to be left overnight.

I then need to put my planner together, I need to print new inserts and then get the planner back into operation.

Ho Ho Ho