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creating Christmas * day 10

The Christmas visit

Elizabeth Gaskell’s House

The Christmas season would not be complete without a visit to one of the many places that put on a Christmas event. I prefer the lesser known places, the ones that are not overcrowded and Elizabeth Gaskell’s house fit the bill completely.

I was as excited about this day as a child might be let loose in a toyshop. Mrs Gaskell’s house had been on my ‘go to see list’ for so long and it was definitely worth the wait to go at Christmas….. and it was everything I had hoped for and more.

It is only over the hill from us towards Manchester city centre, not an easy route ploughing through the unknown areas of the suburbs, but we made good time and as our booking was for 11.40 am we missed the worst of the morning rush. To our astonishment we could park on the street right outside the house for 3 hours free and thereby avoiding the usual steep parking charges in Manchester.

The house was beautifully decorated and in addition there were readings from Little Women (Elizabeth Gaskell had close connections with the Louisa May Alcott) and musical entertainment by the Gaskell Singers choir…who were heavenly to listen to.

There is too much for me to write about and too many photos to edit in this post today but I will do a special post about the visit soon….they would welcome the publicity, I am told, and need more visitors to keep them going especially in January….but the sun is shining and my other Christmas tasks are calling me to go and attend to them….. so I will leave you at this point.

I will be posting creating Christmas * day 11 at some time later today.

Meanwhile thank you for all your lovely comments recently, you always have interesting things to say and I love to hear about your Christmas preparations, though I fear mine are well behind most of you.

And welcome new subscribers – I hope you enjoy reading.

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creating Christmas * day 9

The Nutroast

I like to make our Christmas dinner early as being vegetarian we don’t eat turkey. This year once again DH made our nutroast. It is a more elaborate nutroast that we have for Christmas, a recipe that my daughter found years ago from the pages of good old Woman’s Weekly.

Not only does it have to freeze well but it has to be transportable if we are dining elsewhere on Christmas day and this year we will be at my sister’s, I think, though we haven’t actually had a direct invite from her, but my daughter tells me she is expecting us. Let’s hope that is right and we are not a surprise when we turn up.

Each year I say to DH don’t cook the nutroast too long as we will have to reheat it, but I fear it might just be a touch too cooked, never mind it will still taste good and even better as he made it.

Today, we went supermarket grocery shopping. It is getting noticeably busier on each visit now and the carpark much fuller and there is a bit of a scramble to secure a place, not quite carpark rage but a lot of honking of horns and near misses.

We didn’t need to buy much of anything for the week’s menu plan, mainly all the fresh chiller foods and vegetables, so I made use of all the Nectar offers and stocked up a bit on anything reduced like the coffee and butter; these are such expensive items now.

I also had to pop into town to get a birthday card for my younger daughter for the weekend and look for a small gift to go with the money we will give her. I had a quick look in TK Max for something for her and saw a ‘possible’ that I might go back for later in the week. I had a quick look at their Christmas bits and pieces as they get some quite unusual things.

DH likes having a mooch around there too. He doesn’t generally like shopping but insists on going. I wanted to get some nougat for him for his stocking but today he stuck to me like glue and I could not shake him off long enough to go and buy some without him noticing.

It isn’t often he sees something he likes, but he showed me a set of four rather lovely little ridged flutes in quite a solid glass – quite inexpensive and they would be ideal for a kind of knickerbocker glory style dessert. I wasn’t going to say no to them as I like them too and I am already thinking of what I might serve in them.

I found some rather fun decorations for the tree too, brightly coloured iced biscuits (or are they cookies I am not sure of the difference). Not that we really need any more decor. I might split them between myself and my daughters.

I do like tissue paper to wrap presents in and TK Max and Homesense have had some lovely printed ones and this stocking design is great for the grandchildren’s presents.

And the calendar is so much fun – I will definitely be making one next year and might even see if they will appeal on the coffee morning craft stall.

Tomorrow is our visit to Mrs Gaskell’s house…can’t wait.

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creating Christmas * day 8

Remembering

There are always a few moments during Christmas when we pause to remember someone that we have lost. As you know recently, one of my special friends passed away and today is the 10th anniversary of another special friend who died after a long battle with cancer. She was a colleague at work and we sat together side by side for over 13 years (being affectionately called Hinge and Bracket by our colleagues!).

Working together each day we knew each other and our families so well. If I was having a bad day she would disappear into the kitchen and make me a hot chocolate as she knew that was my comfort drink. We supported each other in many ways and subsequently through our respective cancers and treatments, but unfortunately, Helen’s cancer returned and became terminal and she passed away in 2015.

Since then, the eighth of December has been referred to as Helen’s flowers day here and I take a small posie of flowers round to her mum together with a Christmas card and a little message of remembrance as a small guesture that Helen will not be forgotten.

She was, for me, the best colleague anyone could have wished for and we would laugh and joke through every day together, often till tears ran down our cheeks.

I hope everyone is getting ahead with whatever Christmas plans you have, some are elaborate some more simple but everyone in blogland seems to be enjoying the season so far.

My Advent calendar is looking quite pretty now as I open a few windows and reveal the little colourful picture behind each one. I will take a picture tomorrow. Surprisingly, I cannot remember myself what is behind each window even though I made it myself.

I looked after the boys yesterday for a while, Master Freddie and baby Chocolate, and I had a request to come and make gingerbread men with granny. How sweet is that! As it happens the girls Little L and Sweetie will be down to stay over the weekend, I had planned to make some Christmas mice with them but maybe they would like to make gingerbread men or a house too along with the boys.

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creating Christmas * day 7

The Christmas Card

Christmas greetings sent in a card to friends and family, what better way to keep in touch and express your best wishes for the season and New Year ahead.

Wickipedia tells me that the first known Christmas card was sent by Michael Maier to James 1 of England and his son Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1611. Like mine it was handmade.

As with many of our Christmas traditions they have continued from early beginnings and changed and blended over time to the customs we know now. The “Official” Christmas card began with Queen Victoria in the 1840’s and it is sad that for economic reasons this long tradition is in danger of dying out, like the postcard, as many people send far fewer cards now or none at all.  The price of postage has increased so much to an eye watering 87p each for a second class stamp or £10.44 for a book of twelve. I usually have to buy 2 books to cover the ones I have to post.

The Christmas stamps themselves are always well awaited and this years are particularly lovely. I have a feeling they have to be purchased from the post office now as only ordinary books of stamps are available from the supermarkets.

I have decided this year to cut down my list next year.  For the friends or acquaintances I never see from year to year I will include my email address in this year’s card with a message to say I would welcome an email at Christmas time and if they let me have their email address I will send them greetings in future via email, but this will be the last year I will send them a card.

I often make my own cards, so there is a lot more effort put into them than just choosing a packet from the card shop.  My craft room has resembled Santa’s workshop in the last few days as preparation of the card from idea to finished article takes time and the assembly of the cards is best done on a conveyor belt system.

In November we attended a Lino cutting workshop for which I had prepared a sketch in my sketchbook.  I decided on snowdrops and kept it simple.

I transferred the design onto the lino which was 13cm x 13cm a nice size for working on and took the first print.

The finished card blank size is only 4″ X4″ (10 x 10cm) so I couldn’t use the lino cut itself to print more cards instead I had to colour a print then reduce it on the computer to the required size. I was going to hand colour all of them individually once printed but as I need 30 cards that was a tall order. So I coloured one and then copied it many times on a sheet of cartridge paper.

I did a tiny version to stick onto the back of the card. Before I stick the print to the card I always stamp the Happy Christmas message inside the card first just in case the rubber stamp doesn’t come out well on some of them. I also like to stamp a little Christmas picture on the back of the envelopes.

Eventually everything was drying and I could finally cut the prints out from the sheets and add the double sided tape to attach them to the blank cards.

And voila!…..my Christmas card 2025.

I have still a few more to assemble but they will wait until tomorrow. My newsletter is all ready and I have the stamps so by tomorrow evening I should have them all done and maybe in the post. For the remainder of my Christmas card list there will be some people who will only get a bought card or if I have any homemade ones from previous years I will use these up.

I must say I do look forward to receiving a homemade card, I still have a few friends that like to make their own. I wonder how many readers make their own?

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