A Matter of Choice

Last week was Decorating Day, I thought it was a little early when Aaron suggested it -  yes you did read that correctly! He was sorting out the storage boxes and (wrongly) assumed I would be wanting to put the tree up on the 1st December,  of course he still thinks they should go up much later but he's realised he will never win on that one.  I consulted the calendar and realised it was the best time to put them up as we were busy the following weekend. It has to be a weekend - not really sure why but I feel it is a weekend activity, traditionally with the first mince pies or something similar and a baileys or three - ahh that explains the weekend thing! It turns out that we put them up the same time for the last two years running at least, thanks to facebook memories, so he guessed correctly. As soon as it was mentioned Louka pointed out that it was his turn to put the star on the top this year.  I had no idea if he was right, and assumed that they were bot...

I am a huge fan of Christmas, I always have been but since having kids I love it even more.  I've always said that Christmas is a 'Season' not just one day - well it says so in the song 'Tis the Season to be jolly'!  and most of the enjoyment for me comes from the run up to the actual day. Christmas in Cyprus is a lot more low key than in England, and that combined with the usual blue skies and sunshine means that I like to work a bit harder to create the 'Christmas magic' Last year the boys and I thoroughly enjoyed December, starting with the ‘Advent box’ – containing the advent calendar’s, Christmas themed books and colouring pages, and continuing with many different activities, such as decorating the tree and going to the various events in the area, and of course writing a letter to Santa together.    I remember the excitement as a child of going to see Santa and the thought that he would be soon delivering presents to all the good boys a...

'Tis the season to be jolly....... Have you got your advent calenders at the ready?    Today I am officially excited about Christmas, I will now stop moaning about the songs being played or people putting up decorations (although ours will not go up for another week at least).  Last year I started a collection of Christmas 'stuff'.  Christmas books, films, crafty bits etc for Leo with the idea that I would bring the same things out each year (probably adding to them along the way) as part of our family Christmas tradition.    As I've said before I LOVE Christmas but I only love it in December and because of that I don't want to be watching 'The Snowman' or reading 'Mr Christmas' in August. So it all goes away with the decorations.  This year I decided I would bring it out with the advent calendar so Leo had plenty of time to enjoy watching all the films and reading the books. To make it a bit more exciting I thought I'd make a spe...

You may already know that craft activities are not something that comes naturally to me, add my complete lack of patience and a wilful toddler into the mix and it's not something that usually fills me with joy! However Leo does get very excited and I thought as it's Christmas it would give me something to blog about it would be a lovely thing to do :) I really can't remember if I saw this idea on another blog - if I did and you know which one let me know and I'll credit it as it seems unlikely I would have come up with the idea all by myself! What you need - toilet roll tubes, red paint, card (I used a cereal box), green paper, stickers and glitter glue. Paint the tubes, and leave to dry. Cut out Christmas tree shapes and stick to the card. Stick the trees to the rolls and then decorate with stickers and glitter glue to look like baubles and tinsel - Done! Leo was a bit bemused at first as the only painting we've done just involved splodging colours r...

I've been on a bit of a domestic goddess fad lately, making enough Mince pie s to feed the village and  Onion Marmalde  but I took it to another level last week and made my own Lemon Curd, I'd even been saving jars to put it in! It was actually really easy to make, and a damn sight cheaper than buying it as I've not seen a jar for less than 4 euros here. I just need to find someone with a lemon tree and it would be cheaper still! You will need... Grated zest and juice of 4 large lemons 4 large eggs 350g golden castor sugar ( I didn't have any so used normal granulated, seem to still work!) 225g unsalted butter cut into small chunks 1 level desert spoon cornflour Lightly whisk eggs in a medium size saucepan then add the rest of the ingredients over a medium heat. Whisk continuously until mixture thickens, should be about 7 - 8 minutes. Then turn the heat to the lowest setting and continue to whisk for about another minute. Remove from the heat and...

One of the things I always enjoyed as a child in the run up to Christmas was doing the pre-Christmas baking with my Mum. Mince Pies, and Cheese Straws are the ones that stick in my mind, along with decorating the Christmas Cake with the ancient plastic Santa, holly and robins. It's only in recent years that I've decided that I like mince pies but apart from a couple of years when I left home I've always made them, it just doesn't feel like Christmas until I've made them now. Fortunately now I like them too I can actually eat my own cooking! Although I enjoy cooking, it's taking a while for me to enjoy cooking with Leo but he enjoys it and I want to involve him so I split my baking into two parts. He helped me make the pastry in the morning and I left it to chill until he had gone to bed before I made the pies. You can tell I'm getting old as I had actually planned to go to the pub with Aaron the night I made these but turned down my parents babysittin...

Last night, feeling particularly organised  I decided to start the first of my Christmas cooking, I love cooking and particularly enjoy preparing things for Christmas, as a child I always looked forward to making Cheese Straws and Mince pies with my Mum, always to the sound of carols so it's usually the start of the festive season for me.  I decided it was a little too early to break out the Christmas CD so instead I opted for wine and Strictly Come Dancing on the TV in the background... obviously Aaron was out so I had control of the TV! Some time ago I found a recipe for Onion Marmalde  and thought it would be nice to go with cold meat and cheeses over Christmas. Aaron introduced me to the brilliant Boxing Day tradition of this meal and we always used to get some sort of onion relish.  You can buy it here in Cyprus but there is not a huge choice and it's not usually very cheap so I thought I'd give it a go. Despite collecting jam jars for a w...

I must apologise for bringing up the 'C word' so early.....Christmas is not actually that far away, but you probably knew that. I imagine that in the UK it's been everywhere you turn for weeks now? but here it's only the last week or so that I've seen or heard any mention of it. I'll soon be reading all the usual stuff online about Christmas stress and shopping in tweets and facebook statuses and be thankful that I'm out of it, don't get me wrong I LOVE Christmas but can't stand all the faffing about presents...  who everyone is or isn't buying for, how much it's costing etc etc I like to think that maybe people are going to worry less about it all with so many people now struggling for money but I'm probably being optimistic. This year, for the first time I'm doing home-made stuff, it may not be brilliant but it's the thought that counts and it's that or nothing!  I only be doing things for a very small amount of  peopl...