Rudolph Day

Well, here it is the last Rudolph Day before Christmas Day. So are everyones plans going well?

I have a big shopping trip planned for Saturday and have printed out a couple of lists of what I have left to buy and who for. I have a rough list for the food and drinks shopping. I have been buying Morrisons saver stamps through the year and will also be making use of their £25 voucher offer too. Last year the stamps and voucher paid for my Christmas food shop with about £1.40 for us to pay on top so it worked out very well!

Mistle Merryweather Jingles arrives on the 1st and I have been collecting bits and pieces for him to suprise India with including a Elf video, a Unicorn sticker book (she wants to be a unicorn when she grows up!) and some craft stuff too. No doubt he will be getting up to all sorts of mischief which i'll post about through December.

We are posting India's letter to Santa tomorrow. The Royal Mail offer a special service for Santa letters - details are here - it's not something i've used before so we will see if we get a reply!

Next week we are having our carpet cleaned and then on the Saturday i'll be decorating the house - I can't wait!!

Mince Pies

Today I made a just over two dozen Mince Pies to go in my freezer for Christmas. I have to say not all of them made it to the freezer. We just had to try one each to make sure they were ok, India told me they were yummy so she got to have another one!

I used the following pastry recipe, which is the one we all like best. It originally came from the recipe section on Organised Christmas Elves.

1lb Self Raising Flour
1/2 lb Butter/Margarine
4oz Caster Sugar
1 Egg lightly beaten
A little Water

1) Rub the fat into the flour until it looks like breadcrumbs, then mix in the sugar
2) Pour the egg in and a tiny amount of water to form a dough, add a little flour if it's too sticky
3) Roll out quite thin as the SR flour causes it to rise more than normal
4) Cut out rounds for the base, fill with mincemeat (as detailed here), put tops on if required, brush with a little egg
5) Bake for around 15-18 mins at gas 180

Here are some of the finished pies, which are now safely frozen so we can't eat them all before it even gets to December!

Holidays are Coming....

I had a nice surprise on the way to work a few days ago seeing a giant Billboard with the Coca Cola holidays truck and Santa fixing it with the words Holidays are Coming next to it. I love this advert and I got quite excited to see it, just watching out for the TV advert now which is rumoured to run this weekend!

My Christmas Cards are now all written, bar my cousin who is expecting a baby this week so I need to wait to hear from her! Stamps are bought for the ones I need to post. I'll be posting my overseas cards tomorrow, which is in plenty of time to meet the Royal Mail last posting dates.

At the weekend I defrosted my freezer and got my smaller freezer up and running so I can stock up. I'll make some cookie dough and mince pies tomorrow to go in there. Doing the mince pies and keeping them in the freezer worked great for me last year, saved a lot of time especially as I like to make the pastry from scratch, during December and I always had some to hand. I've decided to order my turkey from Morrisons this year instead of buying a frozen one. I'll do that tomorrow also. It will be the first time in a while i've ordered fresh instead of frozen.

My Christmas list is updated and I have a new 'to buy' list. My Elf letter is printed and ready for Mistletoe to arrive on the 1st. India has been wondering if he'll come again this year already. I have a shopping trip planned for the 28th and I should be able to finish just about everything on my list - fingers crossed.

I found a great idea on the Money Saving Expert forum on this thread for Pots of Gold which I am going to be doing for some of the people on my list. The idea is for a little pot filled with gold chocolates ie gold coins, Wispa Gold, Ferrero Roche and Scratch cards - gold if possible. For my husbands step daughter I am going to put in a Gift card instead of a scratch card. I have a lot of the chocolates, the cellophane to wrap the pots up is ordered from ebay, i'm going to try Ikea for the pots next week and the scratch cards I will get a few when I put my own lottery on over the next couple of weeks.

So far so good with my Christmas planning, i'm feeling quite happy with what i've done and what's left to do!

Shopping

I spent yesterday shopping for Christmas presents and managed to get just about everything on my list and a little bit more besides. We shopped at the White Rose Shopping centre, which is decorated beautifully and all the shops have their Christmas stuff out now of course. The Disney Store (my favourite) had a special offer on their large soft Christmas Mickey's, which I just had to buy, he will look lovely sat on my fireplace - if India ever lets go of him!

So now I'll have to update my list and see who I have left to buy for. The list should now be fairly short. Plus my cards are all made and I will start to write them over the next couple of days and get stamps I need for them ready to be posted.

I hope everyone had a lovely Halloween yesterday we had lots of fun here!

Belated Happy Rudy Day!

I'm a day late I know but I was just didn't get the chance to post yesterday. I hope everyone enjoyed their day and managed to get some Christmas plans/gifts completed!

With a shopping trip planned later this week I have been working on a gift list and have quite a few things on it, which should clear the majority of my gift buying if I can get everything on the list. I cleared out my 'Christmas' shelf in my wardrobe and updated my list with the gifts I already have and all the extra decorations I've picked up this year. So now I know exactly what I have in there. I keep my wrap bag in there too and know that all I need is some wrap for India's presents but I have more than enough for all the other wrapping I'll need to do.

Also been doing a few more cards as well and only have a few left to do to cover this Christmas. I might take a look at the birthday's I still have in the run up to Christmas now.

I tried out the Mars Bar Mousse recipe this afternoon. It was very easy to do and turned out looking like the picture - which doesn't often happen when I cook!


It is minus the chocolate shavings though as I didn't have any other chocolate. The mousse has gone down very well, very very nice and not too rich with it not being dark chocolate. So this is what I will do for dessert on Christmas Day. I can make them the day before and they can stay in the fridge till we need them.

I'm feeling quite organised at the moment, a lot of planning is done and I know pretty much what gifts I have to buy for people - I'm just waiting for pay day now!

Christmas Planning

I thought i'd give an update on my card making - i've made about 38 of the 50 I need to do. I am really loving making them and wish i'd started doing them before!

A lovely friend I made through the Organised Christmas Elves website visited a couple of weeks ago and very kindly brought me a very large box of craft things, which she doesn't get time to use herself. We spent the afternoon making cards (and chatting non stop!).

This was my dining table after we'd finished!!

Unfortunately I don't have any space to create my own craft area so I have most of my craft supplies in a large drawer in my bed and the rest in a large plastic tub. I just get out what I need then, though my dining table is still a huge mess by the time i've made a few cards as I never know quite what I need and bring almost everything!


I really need to remember to start stocking up on stamps now too, i'll try and get a book each time I go to the shops.

Lots of the stores have their Christmas stock out now and I really do have to restrain myself from buying more decorations - I have so many! Some of the items are such bargains though it's hard to resist - such as this cute wooden sign I got for 59p.

Of course it's not just decor that's in the shops now but gifts too. I bought a few more stocking stuffers for various people. A friend has arranged for us to go shopping at the end of the month so I have a list prepared of things I'd like to buy. I've been going through some gift catalogues for ideas for some of the tougher to buy for people on my list.

Also we shall purchase our turkey at the end of this month. I usually get a frozen one and bought a small freezer a few years back that we use just around Christmas for the turkey, cookie dough and just to stock up on food we'll need. It comes in very handy.

So far i'm quite pleased with what i've got prepared for Christmas, i'd like to have a few more presents finished but hopefully I should do that by the beginning of November.

Christmas Cake

I spent Sunday afternoon making my Christmas cake with a little help from India. She likes to help so she can lick the spoon at the end!

I use this recipe - Golden Christmas Cake - that I originally saved from their instore magazine several years ago and have used it every year. Everybody loves it especially my hubby who wanted me to make an extra one to eat right away! I didn't as I think a fruit cake matures over time plus you need time to add a little extra brandy too.

So I prepared my fruit on Saturday and the house just smelt gorgeous with the oranges, I left it to soak overnight. On Sunday I got the rest of the ingredients together and had the cake in the oven in no time. It's very easy to put together and the smell was just so Christmassy.

It's wrapped up now and in my Christmas cake tin. I'll open it up a couple of times to add a spoonful of Brandy but that's another thing ticked off my list. I don't usually decorate my cake as we just like to eat it with cheese and we prefer it without the icing.

Not the greatest photo but i'd already put the cake away when I uploaded the photos! It's not burnt it's just a dark photo!