All is Calm

After all the hustle and bustle of the last few weeks today has been surprisingly calm and relaxed.  I was up fairly early and made the stollen for the girls, It's become a bit of a tradition now that I make them gingerbread granola and stollen at Christmas.  I made the granola a couple of days ago and that Is already in their hampers with their other gifts.  

I also made some rustic looking sausage rolls, one batch with cranberry and one with caramelised onions, my taste tester tells me they are lovely despite their rustic appearance, lol

My Christmas cake is all ready too, I used Delia's Christmas cake recipe but instead of buying and soaking all the fruit I used a premade fruit/brandy mix from Lidl.  I did the same last year and it turned out lovely, fingers crossed this is too.

We had a couple of birthdays this week, my youngest grandson, Jacob, turned 4 on Thursday and my eldest daughter, Jenny turned 41 on Friday.  For Jacobs birthday Joanne had booked tickets for Winter Glow at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern.  We were all looking forward to seeing the lights and getting into the Christmas spirit, but it wasn't to be.  For a few days the weather has been very windy and because of that they had closed the light trail and the fairground.  Supposedly they had sent out emails but some didn't receive any notification that it had been closed.  We were told that we could exchange out tickets and go ice skating or perhaps come back over Christmas as the Winter Glow was on until January 6th.  It had taken us just over an hour to get there so we decided to give ice-skating a go. The kids enjoyed it, Bonnie was a bit nervous at first but she was ok after we'd been round a couple of times, just a shame we couldn't see the lights.

Jean, who blogs at shrimptonandperfect recently had a giveaway on her blog and I won!

I was so surprised when I read my name as the winner on her blog, It came at the right time to cheer me up too.

And look what came, a lovely card, book and christmas tree broach.

Isn't it pretty?  I'll be wearing this on Christmas day, thank you so much Jean :-)  I shall enjoy the book in the new year.

Well that's about it for now, I haven't done much blog reading over the last couple of weeks, Ill try and catch up on all your goings on in the next few days, 

There will be five, (mabe six) here for dinner tomorrow, Stevie, Darren, Joanne, me and Mark.  Stevie called to say that one of Darren's brothers is on his own tomorrow and could he come too, there's plenty to go round so that's ok.  Bonnie and Jacob are going to their dads to eat and then will come here late afternoon,  Jenny, James and the boys are eating at home and coming here in the afternoon too.  I'm really looking forward to the day now.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas

-X-