Now Wearing Purple

FACING THE AFTERMATH Feeling decidedly pants today, due to festive over consumption of Twiglets, nuts, Quality Street, Roses,  Lindor, etc, etc, and lets not forget vast plates of Mr.'s excellent bubble and squeak.  I also appear to have consumed quite a lot of wine, who knew!  It's just so easy to start the day with a couple of pieces of Scottish all butter Shortcake and a cuppa, snatch the odd chocolate or nibble a few nuts throughout the day, but it all adds up.  A lot of it would have been eaten by people dropping in over Christmas, but due to Mr.'s lurgy, here it sits. I'm now looking at my not so lovely post Christmas belly in disgust.  I've tried telling it it has to go.....it's not listening! To remedy this, I will be making a big pot of healthy turkey soup tomorrow.  It is one of our Christmas traditions and one of my favourites.  Family members know to save their turkey carcass for us as we freeze them for stock making. Mr. has ...

A CONVALESCENT (AND PEEVED)  POOCH! Pearl had her op yesterday. and I literally couldn't wait until 5 pm to pick her up. We've  lost two beautiful  and much loved dogs in the last two years and Pearl's no spring chicken.   Everything went well though and they phoned us the minute she came round from the anaesthetic. When we picked her up, she was totally spaced out and ravenous. We'd provided food for when she came round, but apparently, she ended up smearing most of it into her bedding they said. Not happy really as she obviously wasn't awake enough to be given food, but there you go. She didn't appreciate the head cone, so we took it off. Once she'd eaten, she fell asleep and didn't wake up until bedtime. She was even less impressed with the medi-vest she had to wear at night, but at least she couldn't get to her wound.  We had to crate her too as she's not supposed to jump up onto the furniture or go upstairs.  That face says it all. ...

A QUIET TIME Mr. spent the big day in bed, eventually joining me on the sofa in the evening for a couple of hours. Thankfully, he's much improved today. We just had our Christmas dinner, a day late, and rather on the meagre side as neither of us is particularly hungry.  If Mr. was on form, those pigs in blankets wouldn't be in this pic, neither would the potatoes, sprouts and stuffing balls! The dogs had a little feast too and there's plenty for us all to nibble on over the next few days. We were really bad and ate it on trays, in front of the fire (slap wrists!). We bought our turkey from Lidl again this year, as last year's from Fen Farm was one of the tastiest we've ever had and at £46.50, well worth it. This is the first year we've been on our own for Christmas and Boxing Day, which has felt a bit weird to me, but I'm grateful for it to be honest.  We will entertain family in a few days time, when Mr.'s fully back on his f...

BIRTHDAY TIME! Yes, it's my 'special'  birthday today (no, not telling)  and what a day! Mr. was poorly through the night, won't go into gruesome details. Our girl and C cooked me a birthday breakfast and she made rostis, which were totally delicious.  We then opened my birthday present, some beautiful earrings, which I adore. The backs are pretty too. We also opened our Christmas presents, as they won't be here on the day. . We don't really do presents as such, as we  prefer money to be donated to charity as we have everything we need.  We did them a food hamper, as we worried that with them being here so close to Christmas, they would have to rush around at the last minute for things.  Mr. managed to stagger downstairs to say goodbye before going back to bed.  He's so upset as he wanted to spend more time with his girl and  the time they were here went too fast. I was sad to see them go, but didn't cry this time,...

CHRISTMAS MARKET AND ELF! We decided to visit Wells Market today, Mr. was in need of a treat and his favourite street food stall is there, Secret Recipe Thai food. The food is delicious and she uses organic chicken and recyclable containers.  Polystyrene is one of my pet peeves, oh, and don't get me started on plastic, the scourge of our times.  Sorry, no pics of the food as we greedily scoffed it. It had more of the feel of a Christmas market as they'd put up some log cabin style stalls and there was mulled wine and cider on offer and various musical artists belting out Christmas tunes. Finished shopping for the holiday season, phew! I've actually also finished the Elf, which is such a relief as he has to go with the Girl and C on Christmas Eve morning, along with Twinkletoes the Unicorn . Beware, Elf nudity. Elf with vest. It's now dark and we have to go and walk the doggies by torchlight  and drop a Christmas bouque...

NOT A GOOD DAY Our gorgeous girl arrived late last night, with her lovely bloke, C. We stayed up to greet them and then spent a few hours catching up, laughing and hugging of course and then we noticed it was 3.30 am! We all had a lie in this morning and then took the dogs for a nice long walk.  On our return home, we were greeted by the girl with the news that C's Grandma had just passed away.  They were close and obviously, he was very upset.  We had a table booked for lunch at 1.00, which we offered to cancel, but bless him, he told us not to but instead of coming with us, they would meet us there. On the way to the restaurant, we'd stopped at a junction when a learner driver turned to come down past us but ploughed into the side of our car instead. Thankfully, no one was injured although we were shaken up.  The driver was a young girl and her Dad, who was with her, kept apologising and saying that she just lost it on cornering.  Mr. was beside h...

WHO ATE ALL THE PIES? Well, we did actually.  I bought a box of twelve last week and there are only two left. Now some might find that quite restrained, but for us it's positively naughty.   Mr. as I've previously mentioned, doesn't have an overly sweet tooth, but at Christmas, he morphs into an eating machine. Today, I decided to have a go at homemade, again. I have not had much success producing the kind of mince pies I like to eat. Last year's offering, a good example, had excellent tooth chipping properties. They would have gone down well on a clay pigeon shoot (as clays, not edibles). This year I decided to use a pastry blender, instead of the food processor as I thought this might help with a lighter pastry. So armed with said trusty blender and a new pastry recipe,   orange and almond pastry , I set to work. How did that Snowball get there, hic! Well I have to say that my arms and wrists are the weakest part of my body.  I'm l...

CHRISTMAS HAS LANDED! We bought our outside tree yesterday, £11.00 from Homebase for a five footer! Chuffed with that. The smell in the car on the way home was exquisite and somehow relaxed me so much.  My dream is to one day live in a house constructed mainly of wood with hopefully a permanent, similar smell. Today, Mr got started on  'decking the halls'.  He absolutely loves doing this and is much better at it than me.  If he had his way, he would Griswold the exterior of our house. The Griswold's illuminations I'm much more a 'little is more' kind of girl. When it comes to the inside tree, it's artificial, sadly.  We used to do the real tree thing years ago, but once we started rescuing dogs, it just didn't work. They seem less interested in artificial trees, or perhaps that's just our pooches.  We have some re-arranging to do in the Dining Room, before we can put up our winter tree, so that will happen in the co...

OVER ESTIMATING MY TALENTS Holey Moley, I've certainly done that  this Christmas.  This bl**dy house elf is seriously doing my head in. I even had the Mr next to me counting my stitches because I was getting into such a tiswas!  I've done the body (looks too small) and legs and I'm suffering serious doubts.  When I started, I decided to tackle the ears as they looked the hardest.  Yep, they were, so I set them aside.   I have now set the whole blooming thing aside....before I chuck it on the fire. Just look at these legs, well the feet actually..... ...oh yes, the legs are supposed to be knobbly, but the feet should match. As I said, not happening. I've had trouble sourcing the right colours for my slouchy hats and have had to compromise, but hey.  As for monkey and giraffe.....not happening either.  Do you know, life's just too short to get stressed, something I try to avidly avoid. The little kiddies these were meant for will get ...

PRE-CHRISTMAS DETOX! My gorgeous girl left her smoothie maker here when she moved out, as her boyfriend already had one. It's been sitting in the cupboard, taking up space, so I thought I'd give it a go. The idea is to have a little detox before the Christmas onslaught! I have looked up various recipes, but ended up using what I had in the fridge. A Granny Smith apple, chunk of cucumber, stick of celery, spinach and a glug of apple juice. Gave it a blitz Mmmm....doesn't look exactly enticing, but.. ...it had a nice frothy top! It was a beautiful green colour (honestly, it was!) and tasted delicious, very refreshing, but  I probably won't include celery again.  I had it at 10 am and it kept me full until mid afternoon, so impressive!  I also have a lot of frozen fruit that I want to use up and a few cartons of oat and almond milk in my larder, so pink smoothie's on the menu next. Oh, I took the candy cowl to my sister, who was thrilled...

STODGE AND TOAST SWEAT! Are you a breakfast person, or like me, an elevenses type.  I have always struggled with breakfast, even as a kid.  My sister and brother would devour cereals, which I found disgusting, probably as I hated milk.  My most horrific breakfast as a child,  entailed my Mum presenting us with bowls of warm milk  in which sat a poached egg.  We sat around the table, thinking Mum had gone bonkers. Warm milk went with cereals, eggs went on toast. Well, apparently, this was a dish she loved as a child and quite common in Scotland. When we refused to tuck in, she went to each bowl with a fork and popped the eggs.  I do believe this was the moment I found I couldn’t ever eat a runny egg again, and I never have.   I did love porridge though, because the milk was absorbed by the oats and with a big spoon of golden syrup, what’s not to like.  It had to be stodgy though, the kind your spoon could stand up in and when I...