Happy Christmas Everyone

Well, yes, it's nearly here.  I'm quite lucky this year because I had yesterday, today and tomorrow off work.  I'm in on Monday and Tuesday (6am start on Christmas Eve - oh my!) and then another three days off, so not too bad really.

Gathering our 'christmas tree'.  It's a couple of
Cherry saplings which we then bound together,
stuck in a heavy block of wood and decorated.

Ta dah!  It does look better in real life - you can't see the fairy
lights or presents underneath on this picture.  I quite
like this look, festive but different and it doesn't block the
light from the window.

Yesterday we had a bit of a neighbourhood party/get-together.  We see all our near neighbours individually, but never see them together and so we thought we'd have a go at remedying that. The weather was truly awful with howling wind and lashing rain, but quite a few people fought their way through.  I'm so glad they did - we thought no-one would turn up because of the weather.  We got a polypin of beer from the local micro-brewery which seemed quite a cool thing to do - nice just to be able to pull a pint whenever you want.  You do have to look after it though which Bob took very seriously.  We chose to have the beer with the yeast still in it (as opposed to 'bright' which is when they take the yeast out - that's my new bit of terminology for the week by the way) so you have to not move it around to let it settle and you have to keep it between 10 and 15 degrees.  So it was in the utility room which is the coolest room with a thermometer on top of it and we had to keep checking it wasn't getting too warm and opening/closing the window to regulate it!  We made pulled pork for in rolls which worked really well and is really very easy and mulled cider as a welcoming drink which also worked well once we'd completely changed the recipe.  We finally went to bed at 1.45am and so we have had a very lazy day today, bit of tidying up and a walk round the block and that concludes the activities for today!

Here are the knitted chickens I made for Laura's friend to sell -
they do have a look of the Chicken Run chickens.   They are filled
with rice so they can be used as paperweights to bring a
smile to the working day.

We do have some festive greenery (not just dead branches)
across the beams in the kitchen (top) and lounge (above) and
this has little fairy lights in amongst it which don't really show
up on the photos.

So, now I'm feeling Christmassey so:

I hope you all have a very merry, chilled and fun Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year.