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!