Moving on

Seasidegal58

I hope you, Mr Cherry and your family have a lovely relaxing, peaceful Christmas Cherry. 🎄🎅

Cherryfudge

Seasidegal58 said:

I hope you, Mr Cherry and your family have a lovely relaxing, peaceful Christmas Cherry. 🎄🎅

Thank you! And the same for you 

redofromstart

Merry Christmas to you and yours Cherryfudge

Cherryfudge

Thanks @redofromstart, I know this will be difficult Christmas for you and others, but I pray for some sunshine on your day. 

Cherryfudge

Happy Christmas to all who are celebrating! I can't say I'm on top of all arrangements for our here but I'm fairly relaxed. We have food and good company, and the presents that need to be wrapped by tomorrow are wrapped (apart from 2 I'm about to complete for DH before I go to bed).

DH and I had a restless night last night as the tachycardia disturbs his sleep and mine too, but it settled by mid-morning. We decided to make a dent in the veg bounty so dinner was plaice with cous cous and veg and my tea was more of the parsnip soup with the remains of the ready-chopped broccoli and cauliflower.

In the afternoon we had a local walk - it's so incredibly mild! The forecast said about 11 degrees but it felt warmer. We bumped into my friend and had a short chat, then went for our 'coffee' (Earl Grey for him and gingerbread latte for me) with a Bakewell slice between us - not cheap but very good.

Between that and me going to work I cut back some bits in the garden and we finished cleaning the windows, then there was a beautiful sunset as I walked to work. We had a choice of an hour or two hours, and were told to claim for a bonus hour on top. I would have finished in the hour but there was an extra job to do so I made it an hour and half - and was told to claim the extra hour as well, which is nice. No work now till a week on Thursday, but there's just over £60 holiday pay in this month's payslip which is useful. They changed the system so relief staff get paid for accrued holiday each month.

This evening we've watched the Christmas Repair shop (that looked like real snow!) and done some wrapping. The gammon is soaking in the fridge overnight, there's a chicken to go with it (we decided against turkey as last year's chicken and gammon was delicious), there are sausages, mince pies and a nut roast thawing and I can't think of anything else to do apart from text J in the morning to ask about how many beers to put in the fridge (only L will be drinking them), whether they can use extra milk and did she say she'd put cranberries in our freezer?

Expenditure:
Entertainment £9.95

Justcrackingonwithit

Oh thanks everyone for the bird tips, I will definitely get some feeders and hopefully will have lots of visitors soon.

I need to go back and find what a life book is, sounds interesting.

I’ve got 2 bags of parsnips, and some carrots left I was wondering whether to make a spiced root veg soup or just par boil and freeze them.

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas Day x

Cherryfudge

Justcrackingonwithit said:

I need to go back and find what a life book is, sounds interesting.

I’ve got 2 bags of parsnips, and some carrots left I was wondering whether to make a spiced root veg soup or just par boil and freeze them.

My current use-up veg soups are curried parsnip or carrot and ginger.

The Life Book is available free through Age UK: it's a place to list all sorts of important things in case someone else has to take care of things for you. Lots of things are covered such as medication and medical conditions, contacts, insurance policies, bank accounts, where to find important documents, final wishes. It's aimed at older people but I think it makes sense for anyone to have these details recorded somewhere.

Cherryfudge

It's been a nice day though I think I'm too tired now to be more enthusiastic. Too many late, late nights recently, a situation I thought I'd left behind me.

DH and I started on our Christmas stockings this morning then had a long break to do everything else and finished them this evening. The Christmas service is always a bit shorter than usual and we all look forward to the bit where people show their Christmas presents. I think this morning's highlight was something that launched a toy glider over people's heads (a few times). Someone gave me a wrapped parcel as a donation to the pre-schoolers' group so I found out where it had originated and went to thank the person. It turns out the parcel was books for very young children that had belonged to his late wife, a teacher. He wanted to talk about her so we chatted for a while, I hope it helped him. By the time DH and I got home I needed a bit of time out between concentrating on the conversation in a busy setting, being tired anyway and the prospect of cooking dinner. However I came round okay! We 'tidied' the dining room by filling a box with my miscellaneous papers, gathering together the homeless books and dumping things upstairs, then made the dining room pretty with lots of festive ware on the table. I'd got the lounge looking nice last night so I was then able to cook, aided by my sous chef without whom I would probably have broken something. As it was, all that happened was a small cut to a finger instead of a parsnip.

DH already had chicken and gammon together in the slow cooker so I did most of the rest and was (amazingly) nearly there when J and L showed up. For the record, J had provided a/f beers and Schlo3r, gravy, a nut roast, cranberry sauce and veggie pigs in blankets. She'd done a very impressive job of getting the freezables into our freezer. I had a few veg prepped and frozen and had the inspiration of pulling out a couple of bags of last year's red cabbage rather than try to make fresh. There were roasted carrots, parsnips and tomatoes, roasted sprouts, sage and onion stuffing, sausages and roast potatoes, and I literally couldn't have got more in the oven. However, the amounts were close on what we could get through and there aren't too many leftovers. We had Christmas pudding which flamed better than expected with the last of the brandy (time to replace ready for next year) and some custard, then we had coffee before setting off for A and H's.

The others had started out when I realised I'd not sent all their things with them, but in the end everything except the last of the pigs in blankets has ended up where we wanted it.

We had a good couple of hours with A and H, the girls and her parents. DGD1 dragged me off to play every time I sat down. The only presents opened were from DH's sister and auntie, and from H's parents and us to each other: everything else is scheduled for next week at D and E's. I am so glad it doesn't all have to be rammed into one day.

Back at home we had our traditional Christmas tea of smoked salmon and Christmas cake, and opened the rest of our stocking presents and our main gifts to each other. I'm very happy that DH has managed to find me four pieces of the old Denby I collect. Now to find a new place to store it as the shelf I'm using at the moment will only take so much weight safely! I also have fancy hot chocolate, some books and various other things.

I hope to catch up on some sleep in a few minutes!

Lesson learnt for future years: prep and freeze veg in advance and preferably have enough baking trays ready the day before. Also polish the serving spoons because the dishwasher makes them a funny colour!

Cherryfudge

Beautiful weather today with steady sun from a cloudless sky, though the cloud had descended so when we watched the Boxing Day Meet, the High Street looked like a film set with mist obscuring details. Very often I'm not awake enough to get to this so I can't have been as tired as I thought. There were plenty of people to see them off but not so many hunters this year. I usually like to see the immaculately turned-out ponies next to the tall horses but this year I don't think any children were riding. Everybody and their pet dog were along for the occasion, though, and the dogs thought it was prime socialising time. It was a bumper day for coffee takeaways, too.

Part two of the Boxing Day routine is the Fat F ace sale, where we tried but resisted some nice jumpers and I bought a couple of pairs of pretty socks (one for - ironically - a stocking filler). All of a sudden our High Street has gone from insufficient clothing shops to several, so we tried EWM and Se asalt too, though we didn't buy. DH was rather appalled at the countries of origin of some of the things he liked, so he said he'll research before buying. He's already ordered trousers online in the sale.

This afternoon DH is out for a walk and I've been taking clippers to a coat he bought last year and which has deteriorated terribly. It's a soft acrylic and has covered itself in bobbles so it looks ancient and uncared-for. I'm rather annoyed that it cost £100 and is still such poor quality, but the de-bobbling is rejuvenating it.

We are back onto ordinary food today: beans for DH and leftover veg followed by cucumber and houmous for me. Three more bits gone from the fridge, hurrah. Tea will be some of yesterday's chicken with chorizo and pasta.

Well, I can't very well leave the coat half-shaven so I'll end my break there and go back to it.

Justcrackingonwithit

Sounds like a productive day. Isn’t it annoying when expensive things aren’t good quality. Such a disappointment. Hope it looks better debobbled!

Wish I’d got some of your sunshine, thick mist here today. I keep thinking I must get out for a walk, but the furthest I go is to the kitchen!

Ive got left over Christmas dinner for later, my fridge looks sparse but the freezer is full. I’m still thinking what I’m going to do with the parsnips I bought!

Have a lovely rest of the day x