First's

Hello! Happy new month to you all! The 1st December, the most exciting first day of the month in the entire year. Mstr B & Miss A were so excited that Miss A found it hard to get to sleep and there are still 24 nights to go!!!! She is so funny, although the not quite so amusing at 6am when she is dancing around our bedroom unable to contain the excitement any longer - when do they grow out of that???


As you can tell December is a big thing for us here, real magic, a wonderful month and it all starts with the advent calendars. One year, some years ago, we got Mstr B a lego advent calendar and can I just offer one small piece of advice to any parent, don't start anything with children that you are not prepared to continue for much longer than you anticipate!! I am not entirely sure he will ever out grow lego, so it has become a ritual. Miss A is never quite so straight forward (!), her fabric calendar that she has had for some years now is looking very tired so I promised I would make her calendar from a jumbled up mish mash of ideas floating around in my head. What a promise to make, my brain resembles a crows nest at the moment, so it was right to the wire creating this Chrismas tree from match boxes and lovingly covered. So to the wire that I couldn't get craft match boxes anywhere so I bumbled into our local Co op and brought 24 boxes of matches - we wont need to buy matches for years!! We got there and Miss A is delighted, her own countdown which gives her, her own Chrismas decoration at the same time - Phew!

Blogland has turned into a place of such busy creativity that I can't keep up, my poor hook is exhausted! Sparkly stars and flurries of snowflakes have been appearing everywhere, my cosy corner is now the messy corner! But I love it, so busy with so many Christmas goodies slowly coming together.


Mr H is concerned that he will be sat quietly watching a film and by the end will be knee high in a snow drift!!! I really should stop but they are so addictive and so many uses, not that I have come up with many yet.....!!


I have also been busy making these lovely wrist warmers that came from a brief visit to the Attic.

Now as many of you will know there is still no kitchen here at Rose Cottage and cooking is one of my great loves. Baking has seen me through many a stressful time and I am really feeling the lack of a kitchen as we approach Christmas and as for stress........we'll talk of that another time.

So maybe you could cast your mind back to the autumn, full of wonderful sunlight for photos of autumnal colour. I spent many a day with Bumble gathering sloes and rose hips. Much rose hip syrup has been guzzled and the joy of straining our first jar of sloes was so exciting. Never before made so the first sip was divine. As the excitement changed into a mellow mood sat by the fire my thoughts drifted to the huge pile of sloes, somewhat drunken, not like me, sat in a colander - what do you do with those??? Throwing them in the bin seemed such a waste so I googled my dilemma and the results are yummy!

Sloes have a rather annoying stone in their middle so I sat with small paring knife, wet wipes for sticky fingers and a couple of bowls, one for fruit and one for stones. The fire was roaring and with The Good Life and Tom & Barbara with all their smallholding antics keeping me company I removed the fruit from the blessed stones - it is a slow, boring and tedious job, but the end result is worth it.


The next job is to melt plenty of dark, cocoa rich, chocolate, then dip each fruit into the chocolate and leave to set - delicious and well worth the effort. Also particularly good for Christmas gifts along with some home made truffles (I got the recipe for the truffles from Country Living's December issue) decorated with some gold leaf.


Then you have the perfect excuse to sit and play with paper! Making your own boxes so that you have a reason for buying these...


OOOOOhh I love December! xxx