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creating Christmas * day 21

The handmade gifts, part 2

It has been like Santa’s factory here today. I finally made the last of the gifts and today it was the gingerbread stars. It sounded quite easy, but in fact because my mind kept wandering I made a few mistakes here and there; nothing too drastic that couldn’t be fixed, but annoying all the same.

Instead of getting the ready roll gingerbread again I decided to make my own as I wanted it to be more gingery than the bought one….my first mistake – even though I added more ginger than the recipe, I still think I could have added more.

As always with my gifts I have a vision in my head of what I want the final result to be. I must say halfway through I thought it might all be going wrong but in the end I think they turned out close to what I had in mind. You will see the finished results below.

The first step was to cut out hundreds of small stars (well not quite, but it seemed like it at the time). Even this was tricky trying to keep their shape and stop them looking like starfish with wonky points.

I cooked the first batch to the times the recipe stated but I thought they were a bit too crisp and I wanted them a little softer. So I reduced the cooking time for the next batch to 8 minutes and that did the trick.

The next step, once cooled, was to dip in dark chocolate…

….then add some pretty gold sprinkles.

A second batch was dipped in white chocolate….

…..and a few had white chocolate laced over the top.

Once dry, I carefully filled one of the lovely Christmas glasses I had bought specially from Sainsbury’s.

…and repeated three times…

Packaged in cellophane, added a tag and voila!

So now my gifts to my friends are complete: one calendar of local scenes, and a glass filled with gingerbread stars.

Tomorrow, I will deliver them and I can turn my attentions, once again, to the final bits and pieces. Master Freddie will be coming Monday or Tuesday, so all the presents will have to be hidden from sight again.

Mum managed to ring a few times today when I had my hands full of sticky gingerbread dough. She times it well! She doesn’t seem to able to grasp the fact that it will be Christmas in a few days time and also asks over and over if we will be going up on Christmas Day. We have been round it all so many times, and not only me, but so have the carers, and I daresay my sister will have had the same questions.

On the whole though she has been remarkably good in the last few days and there have been minimal phone calls from her. The worst one being her call for help as she had lost the sound on the TV whilst watching Sense and Sensibility. She had obviously pressed the wrong button on the remote as it had changed programs and she had got Shrek on the screen suddenly. Even mum knew the difference! Trying to talk her through the steps to get it back took half and hour by which time Sense and Sensibility was almost at an end!

I expect when my sister says to take a jumper and a bucket on Christmas day in case of heating failure and roof leak in her new home (it is by all accounts a bit of a wreck), she may not be joking.

It won’t be the first strange Christmas…we have had some unusual Christmases in the past which are documented either on this blog or my previous one. When my daughter and her husband worked in a village pub near Masham we had our family Christmas dinner there whilst it was closed to the public. We had the whole pub and restaurant to ourselves and a room each for the night. Catering on such a large scale was much easier in the professional kitchen than it would have been trying to do it at home and, of course, as daughter was then married to a chef it was all prepared and on time.

It was a good Christmas and the men all loved it as they had a pool table and the bar all to themselves.

The other crazy Christmas day was when my MIL was in a care home in Shrewsbury and we went to spend Christmas day and Boxing day with her. We had decided this particular year not to have dinner in the care home with her (don’t ask me why as we usually did) so because all the cafes are closed on Christmas day DH and I had our Christmas dinner (actually cup a soup) in a car park somewhere in Shrewsbury, complete with a camping stove and some very funny looks!

Well that is me finished for the day…just time to press publish before day 21 is over and then time for bed I think. It was exceptionally dark this morning being the winter solstice. I was glad to be warm and cosy in bed and lingered far longer than I should have done, especially as those stars were calling out to be made.

So what is left to create for Christmas now…well I hope you might drop by and see.

I hope all your plans are going well, back soon x

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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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