Holiday round-up

What a lovely Christmas, it’s been full of thievery, food, presents, love and laughter. Oh and a nasty cold!

The thievery, you won’t be surprised to discover was as the result of Pluto and Bess deciding to help themselves. First to an almost full box of maltesers (human chocolate is very harmful to dogs as some friends of ours discovered recently, but there’s not a lot of chocolate on maltesers and shared about between two large dogs with robust constitutions they were remarkably unaffected!), and the lamb bone from our roast! Bess is a master food thief and managed to pull down the roasting dish and share one large bone between the two of them...

This year we decided to have a Christmas on our own, at home. (Particularly poignant in light of it now being our last Christmas in our London flat.) It was the best decision ever. It’s been so relaxed. We got up when we wanted to, ate when we wanted to, opened our presents when we wanted to and went back to bed when we wanted to! It was bliss. Normally we host Christmas and plan to next year as well, and as fun as it is, it’s quite hard work! And as I’ve been suffering from quite a bad cold and my partner getting over one, it’s meant we’ve really been able to rest and indulge ourselves.

We got some amazing presents and my partner made a big fuss of my birthday. She made me breakfast in bed on Christmas day and on Boxing Day too. And then on Christmas day she bought all the presents in so we could open them in bed. It took her quite a while to bring them all through. We ended up with 4 piles; her xmas presents, my xmas presents, joint xmas presents and my birthday presents! I was in 7th heaven! People really indulged the big kid in me as well which meant I got lots of fun presents.

We decided to have lamb instead of turkey this year and started dinner quite late, but as it was only us, we could do what we liked! Dinner was delish and we had ordered an Italian pannacotta (from Harrogate in Yorkshire surprisingly!) to have as a desert rather than Christmas pud or cake which both of us find a bit heavy and rich. With strong coffee the orange and chocolate pannacotta was lovely!

We didn’t rate the telly very much over Christmas (although loved the new Wallace and Gromit!) so largely listened to new CDs and started to read our new books...

Boxing Day was equally relaxed and the leftovers tasted superb. And to be honest, we’re not doing too much this weekend either! In our defence, with the move coming up, we have a massive amount to do and need to shift these colds to do it all properly. We did have the energy to spend all our wedding vouchers on a gorgeous new bed and very, very expensive new mattress from John Lewis! I also bought a new 32” TV, a mixing bowl and a wallpaper border! I LOVE online shopping!

We did all our family visiting before Christmas, dropping off presents and catching up on news, although we now we have to make sure we see people again before we move as well.

My partner’s grandmother gave me some money for my birthday and Christmas and I spent most of it in a day on heirloom vegetable seeds for the new garden. I chose some flower seeds as well, but mainly it was all my favourite veg! I can’t wait to start planning what to plant and when.

Right now I’m still in my PJs and apart from needing to walk the dogs, I will be having a browse at some of the sales (need a fridge and a washing machine!) and then it’s more good food and more laughter. This has been the best Christmas and birthday ever!

Food

Thursday night a friend popped over for some soup and a catch up... toward the end of the evening, I made a throw away comment about our laptop being out of order and he got excited because unbeknownst to us; he’s a bit of a computer geek! He took away the laptop and worked on it for a couple of days and guess what I’m typing on now? Yep, he worked some kind of magic and discovered that we had a virus. Although our security was good, it still wasn’t good enough to protect us from a Trojan virus. Anyway, thanks to him everything is cleaned up and functioning really well!

Friday we had more friends over for dinner (spicy bean pie – courtesy of Abel and Cole organic grocers – roasted sweet and baby potato, roasted baby turnips and parsnips, steamed broccoli and onion gravy; followed by a strawberry and rhubarb cheesecake. And oodles of wine! Then we played the board game my mum bought me last Christmas – the CSI board game. It was very good! I was leading until one of our friends got a good throw and the opportunity to say who the moiderer was! I had known who it was from almost the beginning of the game. (It was a particular word that gave it away!) But you need to land on the relevant square before you can get a shot at guessing the perpetrator so even if you know early on you can’t say who you think it is until toward the end of the game...

Yesterday we went down to Brighton to see the in-laws and my partner’s grandmother. It was a lovely day even though we were clearing out her grandfather’s room (who passed away just before the wedding.)

Today we’ve had a perfect day – and we treated ourselves to a lovely breakfast at the Blue Mountain cafe this morning. Tonight, organic steak stir fry! Have you noticed I keep talking about food on my blog? Anyone would think I was pregnant... although in my case that would be a miracle birth! ;0)

Sorted

This weekend we’re sorting. Which I know doesn’t sound very exciting but so far it’s been fun. I guess it’s a bit like going to the gym (not that I’ve been there for a while), it’s difficult to get motivated to go in the first place, when you do go it’s not as bad as you thought, and the sense of satisfaction afterwards is enormous! Our ‘problem area’ was the cupboard under the stairs. For a large flat we don’t have that much storage and it was becoming more and more scary. When the cleaner began to express a desire not to get the hoover out anymore, because she was fed up with being caught in a landslide of stuff, we knew we had to do something...

So yesterday I cooked a lovely breakfast - every weekend we make the effort to have really nice breakfasts; pancakes with fresh fruit and maple syrup which my partner does, or a full English which I do! – and this prepared us for the task at hand.

We’re still not done, we have the kitchen and outside cupboard still to do as well as tidying up the mess we’ve made. But we’ve done well so far! The cupboard looks fabulous (can a cupboard look fabulous?!). My partner put some shelves in there and everything is tidy and organised! A miracle! We’ve also thrown out LOADS and I’ve decided to do a car boot, because I quite enjoyed the last one I did and we can put the money in the wedding fund – and if you don’t make much, you haven’t lost much either and you can just take it all down the charity shop. We’re being quite ruthless as well: books, CD’s, DVD’s, clothes, electrical, bags, kitchen stuff etc., etc. There are three rules, do I love this thing, do I use this thing, can I replace this thing? If something is special it stays and if something is used (or re-read/listened to/watched) even if not very often, it can stay as well, and finally the last rule means that if we do chuck something that we later find we need, can it be replaced?

Why this is also exciting is because it’s in preparation for when we eventually move. Have you noticed, you move, and as you unpack you sort stuff out and then throw loads of things away? Well we want to do that before we move. Why lug stuff 300 miles away if you don’t have to.

So whilst I may not have lost weight this weekend what with breakfast, cake, rhubarb crumble and the Sunday roast I’m cooking later, our home is a lot more streamlined!

I even managed to watch the rugby yesterday although I wish I hadn’t. What a way to start the championship by giving Wales victory on a plate?

PS. The picture has absolutely nothing to do with anything I've been blogging about, but I just thought it was so damn cute...