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creating Christmas * day 19 and 20

The handmade gifts

Each year, I try to find some time to make homemade gifts for a few of my friends. We only exchange small, relatively inexpensive, gifts at Christmas, but they are often the most delightful.

A few years ago I bought some desktop calendars for 50p in the sale after Christmas from Sainsbury’s. They came on a gold stand and although the calendars would be out of date by the following year, I had the idea to make my own from photos I had taken in and around the village. I made these 2023 Calendars for my friends to give for Christmas 2022, you can read about it here.

Last Christmas, one of my friends told me how disappointed they were that I hadn’t made the calendars again for 2025, so I thought I would have a go at making them again for this coming year.

With this in mind, I have been taking a few photos all year around the village, documenting some of the everyday scenes I come across and searching out any interesting places or events to put on the calendar. It is always interesting to see if they can guess where the places are, and like any good puzzle I put the answers on the last page.

It does take a while to process these; editing photos and typesetting the dates for the month (and hopefully not making any mistakes!), so it usually takes me a good two days to complete them. I have of course obscured the name of our village from title in the photo!

All that is left now is for me to package them up in cellophane bags to keep them clean and then I can do the second part of their gift, either tomorrow or perhaps Monday. It will involve some food so I cannot make them too ahead of time.

As far as other Christmas preparations are concerned, I have been washing and DH, bless him, has been running away with the smoothing iron! Presently, he is on ‘cheffing’ duties and what a help that is.

Just to mention, for anyone that has been waiting for me to post the Festive Nut Loaf recipe it is now up on the drop down menu and at the moment also on the header strip.

It is certainly all downhill to the big day now, I am wondering if I have forgotten to do anything. x

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creating Christmas * day 18

The Christmas lights

“The light shines in the darkness” John 1:5

One of the best things about the darker nights is everywhere is aglow with festive lights and candles. I do like a bit of sparkle in the garden, but this year we haven’t got our Christmas trees to decorate: one of the potted ones had reached a height far too big for our tiny garden so we gave it to someone to plant on their large 2 acre garden. The smaller one turned brown in the hot weather when we had to limit our water use because of the drought in the local reservoirs, and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t revive it.

I bought a string of warm white lights for DH to wind around the branches of the amelanchier tree. Not an easy exercise and even now when it is lit of an evening we can see where adjustments are needed – though if this rain continues that might not happen and we will have to live with it being a little cockeyed this time around!

Whilst browsing the Argos catalogue online for the string lights I spotted the ones in the photo below and they are also warm white, battery operated on a timer, and even better they were reduced.

The little flower bulbs on the end of a flexible stalk do look pretty amongst the foliage in my two wooden troughs under the window in the front garden.

I do like to see everyone else’s garden lights; at one time when our children were young we would pile into the car one night after tea and do a tour of the neighbourhood and secretly award people first, second and third prize and a highly commended (for anyone who had obviously tried hard). Of course there were fewer people putting lights out at all back then; our own cul-de-sac has since exploded with light shows, though I am always glad I don’t live next to the flashing ones.

This year we have had to seek out battery operated lights because we recently had a new electric garage door fitted and it clamps shut very tightly with the floor so running a cable outside from an indoor socket underneath the door is no longer an option. I expect fitting an outdoor socket will be another task for DH in the new year.

Meanwhile, inside on the mantlepiece, I have quite a minimal look at the moment of pine cones and one or two favourite cards, and they are set off with the tiny lights threading their way through. I will probably swap this over for more Christmassy decor when I get the box of treasures out.

With all this light shining amongst us how can we fail to rejoice in the Christmas season.

If you think you are missing days 16 and 17 then you are quite right.

Day 16 – Tuesday, we had our hair appointments in the morning (need to look a bit spruced up for the day), then shopped the rest of the day buying the last of the food and inbetween we hand delivered a few cards to save on postage. Shopping at the moment is just too exhausting.

Day 17 – Wednesday, I went to Master Freddie’s school Nativity play. He was a star (in both sense of the word!) It was a modern musical Nativity called – ‘Lights, Camel, Action’ and included the whole primary school. He is at a new school now since the move, with only 120 pupils, and it is the first time I have been able to go and see him in anything as his previous one limited the audience to parents only. They had 3 showings, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to accomodate everyone but half the children were away ill and others had to play 2 parts to cover. They all did marvellously and I so enjoyed it….not so sitting on those tiny chairs!

Welcome to my new readers – I hope you are enjoying following along whilst I create our little Christmas here. I have still plenty of tasks to do and hopefully, I will get to blog about them in the next few days.

Back soon x

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creating Christmas * day 15

The Christmas neighbourly get together

(This post is a day late but I didn’t get home unitl after 1 o’clock last night and then straight out again today for an appointment).

Most years, but not every year, we get together with our immediate neighbours for an evening before Christmas.  It is always a casual affair and a date set if both parties have an evening to spare.

I thought it was definitely my turn to host it but apparently not; so on Monday night we went round to our neighbours house and I had very little to do apart from take a bottle and make the chocolate.

Homemade chocolates
Homemade Chocolates

My neighbour always welcomes the chocolates I make, so I make extra and leave plenty with her. These are old pictures but it mostly looks the same with some variations on nuts and adornments.

We had a lovely evening chatting about old times on our cul-de-sac (we have both been here 40 years now) and the changes that have occurred over the years.  We have daughters, grandchildren and a mother of similar ages and can relate to all the problems that we have being in the sandwich generation.

We discuss everything and anything from garage clear outs (that we both need to do), the cost of living, the best supermarket prices to plays and events we have been to.  We are very comfortable in each other’s company so it is always a nice relaxing evening where we can be ourselves.

I look forward to this one evening a year (although if we can manage it we have another in the summer months); this is in addition of course to our long chats on the driveway as we see each other coming and going or in the garden.

It is so lovely to have a good neighbour as others have come and gone over the years and a few have been rather problematic.

So I will keep plying them with my chocolates in the hope that they don’t move before we do!!

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creating Christmas * day 14

The gingerbread men

As requested by Master Freddie, today was gingerbread day and as Little L and Sweetie were here for the weekend all the grandchildren took part (though baby Chocolate only helped with the decoration as he arrived later).

I cheated and bought two packs of the ready made gingerbread from Sainsbury’s. I noticed it in the ready roll pastry chiller and thought it a good idea….and thank goodness I did as I had little time to make some beforehand and when all said and done the children are really eager to cut out the shapes and then get down to the serious business of decorating.

I would say it all went off successfully – you can usually tell by the size of the mess and the extent of the stickyness!

DH rolled out the gingerbread, whilst I filled the waiting oven trays once the shapes had been cut and a bonus – there was no squabbling over the cutters.

The 10 minute wait for them to cook, with watchful eyes on the oven…… and at last the decorating could begin.

Sweetie decorated the least of them, but ate most of them!

Little L is quite artistic and was able to control the icing better. I love her gingerbread man with a moustache!

Master Freddie’s technique was to pile everything on….it will all taste good.

With the remains of the white chocolate and sprinkles we made some chocolate lollies for Christmas.

The clearing up was a mammoth task, but with all hands to the deck we managed to clear the table to have lunch when their mums and dads came to join us – probably thankful that granny had volunteered to do this.

Afterwards, my younger daughter unwrapped her birthday presents with a lot of help from the little ones. Little L had made her a lovely card that was like one of those children’s activity books with pop up sections and flaps to raise and pull out bits.

They all left with trays of gingerbread and a few other crafty bits we had made over the weekend and now everyone has gone home and peace has descended….. bliss.

But, I must get back to finishing my cards.

Methinks, it is going to be a mad week ahead as we move ever closer to the big day. We have a neighbour’s get together, a hairdresser’s appointment and another concert to attend. The crowds are building up now to such an extent that you have to wait in a long queue for the smallest of things, or even to park the car or vacate the carpark.

Luckily, I won’t have to go back into town for very much now other than the fresh fruit and veg. I do need to take stock though of what is still to be done and go through my list.

Hope you had a lovely Christmassy weekend and for those of you that are under the weather I wish you a speedy recovery. X

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