Happy Christmas

Red clover asked me what was a mince pie? Its a pastry pie filled with mince meat. I try to make my pastry really short, hard to roll out but its worth the effort if its light and crumbly. The mince meat is sweet and consists of, sugar, apples,raisins, sultanas, currents, citrus peel, black treacle, rice flour, mixed spice, orange and lemon peel and veg oil. I don't make mine as if you buy a good make you can't really beat it. I make different tops and sprinkle with icing sugar, Robert loves them I have hidden some to save for Christmas week. I do have intentions every year to make them throughout the year but usually forget.

This is one of the Christmas cakes that I make, we have half eaten one I save this one for Christmas. The mixture is for one very large cake but I make two. I mix the fruit together several days before I bake it so the alcohol can soak into the fruit, its funny Robert has such a steady hand but when I ask him to pour the alcohol on his hand always slips and to much goes in funny that!

Last year to go with my rusty tree i got these rusty advent buckets. We put three dog treats in each one and when we go to bed the dogs get one. As soon as we put them out this year tom knew and stood barking at them.

This is my wreath on the door.

This is the arrangement on the coffee table

You can't really see the lights at there best but Robert arranged them for me they light up the path

Things are really busy at the shop, so if I don't get to blog again before Christmas I will wish you all a happy Christmas and may we all have time in our busy lives to remember why we are celebrating at this time. Best wishes for 2009.