All the plays and party's, and finishing up for the year and our time off and last week was spent sorting the house out and getting everything ready for Christmas. Such a lot of work goes into just a couple of days of Christmas and sat here now i can completely understand why so many people go out and buy all the ready made food thats available in all the supermarkets, my Sister in law was working on Christmas morning so they had bought everything from M&S and my brother was telling me how easy it was to just put everything in the oven and as it all comes in foil tins ready for the oven, there was not much washing up either! Sounds good to me, maybe i will think about doing that next year. As for me i like to make life as hard as possible when it comes to Christmas dinner. One of the things i love doing is trying out new foods, well not new foods, but different recipes. I do love cooking for special occasions, its something i enjoy and though i make new recipes a lot during the year they tend to be quick and easy family meals, but for Christmas i like to pull out all the stops and try something extra special, that hopefully has the wow factor. The problem with this is that its requires lots of planning and is very time consuming so usually i end up absolutely knackered, like i am now!
Christmas eve we got up extra early and set of to do the food shop at 8am, normally i do it in the days before but this year i decided to try it on Christmas eve as usually the kids are so hyper all day, that we thought if we keep them busy all day we would A) keep the house tidy ( as we had a massive clean and tidy the day before) and B) they would be super tired and go to bed earlier than usual on Christmas eve to give us time to sort out and build some of the presents without us having to be up all night. So we got to Aldi and did the shop, but there were a few things that were sold out, so off to Morrisons and a quick trip to Fleetwood to get some charger plates, then through the drive through at Mc Donalds for some lunch and home to unpack. We had then planned to go the Blackpool Tower Circus in the afternoon as i had a couple of free adult vouchers, but a last minute thought made me call them only to find out it was booked up! should have realised it would be, so we decided to go to the cinema, but the kids where then happy playing on the xbox and doing other things so i got started on the food prep. This was at 1pm, we had a quick break and popped to the pub for tea and then back to the prep.
Basically i spent 6 hours preping the food and table, then tiding, mopping the floors and putting the presents out, We stopped for an hour in between to do all the kids stuff, putting the stockings out and reindeer dust etc, thought unfortunately Fred had already taken himself off to bed fully cothed, and was fast asleep! bless him. Paul built up Alex's train table, it was 12.30pm when we finally finished and got to bed, aching and tired!
4.45am Ewan and Fred come in "can we go down stairs!" We had 4 hours sleep! luckily the other two were still asleep so i sent them to play in there room and they managed too till the other woke at 6.15am and we all went down to open pressies!!! They were so happy and excited with there pressies ( i had managed to stop myself buying all the extra crap, i mentioned in a previous post!) they loved there pressies and "Ewan declared it the best Christmas ever! Molly did she she would have liked her stocking filled, as well as the big pile of presents!!!! Paul got me some gorgeous Tiffany earrings to go with the Tiffany necklace and bracelet he had got me in previous years
I made the kids a special breakfast, with waffles, brioche, mini chocolate muffins, crumpets, danish pastries and had bought old fashioned little milk bottles for them, we had bacon butties which were very welcome after little sleep!
My Parents came round at 1.30pm with more pressies and they had bought Molly the dolls pram she has been after for ages and had noticed that Santa hadn't brought.
My candy cane center piece i made
The table all set up and ready, i made more effort with the table this year, making lots of things including real cranberry napkin rings and i bought red table runner, napkins, chair bows and charger plates.
Molly go so many gorgeous dresses, she is such a little princess and loves dressing up
These are the little crochet mini stockings i made to put the cutlery in
I made each of the kids these little chocolate sleighs
Finally it was Christmas Dinner time, and this is what we had
Hot Herb Buttered Prawns and Salad
Fruit Christmas tree
Whole leg of Lamb, slow cooked in Port and stock, stuffed with a stuffing made from Fresh Cranberry's, Streaky bacon, Port and Thyme.
Served with Slow cooked Festive red cabbage spiced with Star anise and cinnamon
Creamed sprouts, with double cream and nutmeg
Onion stuffing baubles, with homemade stuffing and wrapped in streaky bacon
Mixed roast potatoes, butternut squash and parsnips doused with the post and stock
Carrots, Broccoli, and Cauliflower
Homemade person Cranberry Sauce
Gravey made from the port and meat juice
Millionaires Shortcake bombe
Gingerbread cake with Caramel biscuit buttercream icing and decorated with homemade ginger
bread
I made everything from scratch so you can see why it took me so long!!!
But it was so worth it, it was delicious!
After dinner it was chill out time
This was so easy, to make and i got to use my pop chef for the shapes
The Ginger Bread cake and Millionaires Chocolate Bombe
I never took many pics during dinner but my Mum did so i will have to copy them. Every one enjoyed it and Ewan surprised me by saying how yummy the Lamb was!!!, this is amazing as Ewan
usually will not eat meat apart from processed stuff like sausages.After dinner it was chill out time
Ending with a game of Doggie doo, that involved much laughter, all i could do was sit as i was knackered!
Hope you all had just as much fun!!!
Happy Christmas all!!!
xxx
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