Christmas comfort

How do you create Christmas comfort? We don't turn the whole house into a christmas grotto (anymore!). We focus on making a few areas in the house really festive using soft candle light, fairy lights, scents and food, of course, food!

I drew a simple wreath on our chalk board and surrounded it with flickering candles. This sits on the mantlepiece above the log fire and sheds less pine needles than a real wreath!

The Noel sign is at the centre of a string of fairy lights strung over the fire.

And I have a couple of identical oil burners which are always filled with cinnamon, clove and winter themed scents. I suppose something is only special if it's not what you do all year round. In summer we rely on natural light to cheer up the cottage but in the darker months I prefer not to blast artifical light into the rooms from a central overhead bulb. Pools of light in various corners feels much more cosy.

Biscuits are a must and these were actually made for some overseas visiors we had. Of course in winter, Scotland mostly looks like it's covered in icing sugar.

The apple, cinnamon and custard pie which is rather splendid is from the mad about macarons website. Enjoy :)

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Teaching a dog to get downstairs

Regular readers will know we have a puppy. He's a Parson Russell and we've been getting to know each other over the past 3 months. His territory is Downstairs. He is not allowed Upstairs, that's our territory. But having found he'd sneaked up, I took it as a training opportunity. So the best way to teach your daft dog to get downstairs is bribery. Position his favourite snack on the step below him.

Watch him get close enough to sniff it...

And close enough to lick it....

Then move it to the next step down.

If he wants it badly enough he'll find a way. Finally, buy a baby gate to sit at the bottom of the stairs to stop it happening again!

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Christmas Baking in Advance

I'm not a huge fan of the traditional mince pie. They always seem to have too much dry pastry and not enough filling. I learned how to make these little beauties at the bertinet bakery school last Christmas. I have strayed slightly from the recipe we used then which was for a sweet pastry base, filled with homemade (and nicely booze) mincemeat and topped with almond cream. The almond cream is genius. It creates a light, moist topping and even other people who share my dislike of this most Christmassy pie like this version. I used a pate sucre recipe from the ever reliable Jill Colonna's latest book, Teatime in Paris and filled them with a bought mincemeat. When I ran out of mincemeat, I switched to prunes soaked in rum. We always have a jar of these on hand for dropping into hot coffee or livening up yoghurt. Try it, it's just dried agen prunes with rum poured over to cover. To finish off the mince pies you can spoon on the almond cream but I like to pipe it because I'm quite messy with a spoon and Since I discovered the joys of disposable piping bags, I pipe everything. I used flaked almonds on top of the mincemeat filled pies and improvised with some vanilla powder on the rummy prune filled ones. What I love is that once baked, these can be happily frozen for two months. To revive, just take out of the freezer and allow to defrost for a few hours or pop straight from the freezer into a moderate oven for 15 mins or so. They keep their crispy pastry crunch and are amazing. Stress free Christmas bite sized baking!

Then there were almond amaretti from an online recipe which I was disappointed with because they came out soft and squishy and I wanted the ones which were crispy.

This was followed by stollen, another recipe learned courtesy of M. Bertinet. This is seriously worth doing. The recipe in his book "Crust" will make 3 large stollen loaves which again can be frozen. I chose to slice my loaves before storing in the freezer so I can defrost as needed rather than defrost a whole loaf. It's basically an enriched dough rolled up with almond cream, marzipan and juicy rum soaked dried fruits. I promise it is worth the effort.

People say you'll never buy shop bought again and sometimes that's true but sometimes not. This time, it's true.

And my go to recipe for biscotti is here. This is the fourth year I've made them and they will store in an airtight container for at least two weeks. Again it's all baking you can do in advance so you have something to offer friends who drop by.

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All Hallows Eve

Our village is very good at marking the seasons and annual events. This Halloween, the High St and little alleys were filled with bewitching decorations and candle lights flickered in hollowed out pumpkins.

Holes in the cotswold stone walls were filled with spookiness.

The pre-Christian Celtic tradition of Samhain was believed by our ancestors to be the time of year when the veil between the world of the living and of the dead was at its gossamer finest and the dead were remembered and honoured. Now it's all about colourful carved pumpkins lighting the way for children dressed as something gruesome playing trick or treat. Time moves on and each generation reinvents their world. I appreciate the older traditions...but I can't resist a carved pumpkin.

The weather has provided the traditional mistiness required for spooky walks in scarey woods. Atmospheric innit?

We had dressed Buster up in his new scarf and off we went, exploring.

These mushrooms looked like steps to climb the tree trunk.

While these pure white fungi crept down a fallen log.

Sunlight began to brighten the sky for the first time in a few days and was very welcome. I can take the cold but having the sun and sky hidden from view for days on end feels grim.

There are a few small colourful reminders left in the fading hedgerows but the birds will strip these last berries soon.Once the commemorations and remembrances are passed, it feels as if we can justifiably fill the house with food, friends and log fires. Here's to hibernation!

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Quick projects

This week has been filled with quick little evening projects I can sneak in between puppy sofa snoozes. I've had to nip upstairs to the attic craft room where there is a spotlight and spare glasses etc which make mini things easier to work on. Until now. I've taken delivery of a sofa side magnifying lamp which promises to bring joy to my crafting life and let me stay in the living room with other people and watch TV with them and generally be more sociable and less of a crafting leper. Anyway...remember this from the weekend?

It turned into this...

It measures about 1.5 inches but I have enbiggened it you can see. I'm not impressed with my colour choices and I don't think the silver French knots show well against the steel grey so next time I'll change that. Otherwise it was nice and easy to do and can be added to an embroidery hoop or used as the topper on a stuffed heart shape. (That's another idea in my head....)

Here's some other stuff I've been playing with...I love appliqué and machine sewing so I'll be making a few of these with different Christmas themes.

Here's one that's finished. And now it's been given (as a belated birthday present, oops) to the person it was made for, I can post this :)

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Raspberry and Amaretti Crunch Cake

Oh my this is good cake! It's a ridiculous thing to have made as I'm home alone this weekend and the dog doesn't like raspberries. My excuse is I'm testing it to see how long it remains nice to eat. It makes up very quickly, just whizz up some flour, eggs, sugar, ground almonds and butter then layer in a cake tin with raspberries and amaretti biscuits but be warned, it cooks low and slow. If you search for it on the BBC Good Food website (use the name from the title above) it will tell you to bake for 55 to 60 minutes. Mine took 1 hour 40 but it filled the kitchen with the welcoming smell of baking after a long wet afternoon walk. As I was sampling a slice, I got around to a little project I've seen a lot of on Pinterest.

I've seen a lot of mini hoops with embroidered christmas motifs. So, I bought some threads in smokey blue and silvery colours and drew a little design. I'll let you know how it goes. I managed to buy the threads because today for the first time, I abandoned the dog for 3 hours and went to town. It was lovely but I won't lie, there was guilt. During the week, I work upstairs in a little back office so the puppy knows I'm around even though I might ignore him for 2 hours. I hadn't actually left the house until this morning. He has a crate, loads of toys, water and the run of the kitchen so although my sensible brain knew he had all he needed, my puppy brain was beating me up about it. He was fine but I was greeted with....

Thank goodness you're home! Someone has eaten all the fluffy off the tennis ball.

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Stotties, good blogs and hygge

I read somewhere that dogs don't like the smell of citrus and since Buster's current hobby is chewing everything except his chew toys, I thought I'd test the theory using the power of lemons.

Dog v Lemon

Dog 0 - Lemon 1

I think I may have found the way to save our entire house. We will live in a lemon scented non-chewed world. But enough of dogs. Many of my interests follow the seasons, so in spring it's sewing and needle felting, in summer it's camping, in autumn it's baking, baking and baking. As we move into winter and Christmas, it's everything! I love this time of year and without realising there was a word for it, I have been practising Hygge most of my life. Pronounced "hooga", it's a Danish word and concept which translates roughly as cosiness and is what the Danes credit with getting them though the dark winter months. Hygge means creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good, simple things in life so the warm glow of candlelight is hygge. Sharing coffee and cake with friends and family is hygge, as is curling up on the sofa under a blanket to read through a good blog. I'd been catching up with Madaboutmacarons.com having just bought Jill's latest book....

...and got distracted by some links and landed at a wonderful foody website with a recipe for stotties, a bread from north east England I'd enjoyed many years ago while working in that area. This fabby bread only needs to prove once and is simply rolled flat before being baked for 15 mins. Then turn the oven off, let the bread sit in the cooling oven for about 30 mins and it's ready to munch. The recipe is courtesy of lavenderandlovage.com and both the bread and blog are well worth trying. I split the dough in two and we ate them warm from the oven with some butter. That's hygge!

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Puppy Love

I need to ask you to excuse the photos.  My iphone decided it didn't want to automatically upload pics to picassa anymore.  So I've had a fun time searching the internet for a) the right way to describe what was wrong in order to b) invite the correct answer then c) understand the answer and d) put it into practice then e) discover I couldn't edit pics.  It's been a sweary few weeks in my house.  

 So here are some rubbish pics of autumn scenes round our way.

 We've been visiting our favourite foraging sites waiting for the blackberries, cob nuts and sloes to ripen ready for picking.

And as ever it's been very nice.  We've had some lovely chilly, crispy days with a little leftover summer sun.

And our sunflowers finally opened so the bees had a good time too.  So far, so normal....

Then this happened...

In our rural village it is compulsory to own either a tractor or a dog and since we don't have the space for a tractor we'd been thinking about having a dog for nearly a year.  A change in circumstances means I currently work from home and that opened up a puppy sized window of opportunity and slightly to our surprise, we took it.

 Meet Buster, a mischievous Parson Russell Terrier from north Devon.  He was about 8 weeks old when these pics were taken. 

The first 72 hours of puppy parenthood were a nightmare and I seriously wondered if we had just made a massive mistake.  We didn't speak Dog, he didn't speak English, we were house trained, he wasn't, we thought he needed quiet time on his own being silent, he thought otherwise. Over a week we got used to each other and once he'd had his vaccinations and we were no longer house bound, he endeared himself to everyone and became The Cutest Thing in the Village.  I've spoken to more people in the past 5 weeks than the past 8 years.  Socialising a puppy is a very sociable thing! 

 At first we took local walks round the churchyard to get him used to the big world and its interesting smells.  This weekend we went further and took the Park and Ride bus into Bath.  The bus was loaded up with adults who petted, took photo's and generally coo'ed over Buster, much to his approval.

 Buster about town.  Posing in front of Bath Abbey.

 It took an age to walk down to a pet shop I wanted to visit because we were stopped every few feet with someone wanting to say hello to Buster (also known as BusterNO and BusterSIT) and of course he was on his best cute behaviour.  Naturally the girls in the pet shop got all soppy about him and dressed him up in a Frankenstein's Monster outfit. I wish I'd taken a pic!  I resisted buying that outfit and opted for something visible now it's getting darker.  We're going back for a Santa outfit in December.  Don't judge me.

Buster is now 13 weeks old so we're entering our 6th week of puppy ownership and are still learning how to look after each other.  He has doubled in size (and weight!) and can do sit, stay, give paw, ring a bell to go outside for toilet time, quiet woof on command, half roll over, touch with his nose and fetch and drop.  He can also terrorise the other dogs at puppy training, eat bird poop, ignore all his commands, worry horses and entice an otherwise sensible vet to urge me to dress him up as a pumpkin for Halloween and take a photo for her.  I. Must. Resist.