Christmas Trees in The Church

On Thursday I met my friend from Grammar School days in the Osier Cafe in St Marys church in Stowmarket for a coffee and a look around this years Christmas Tree festival, which was lovely and colourful as always. 

The theme was Christmas Carols and songs and some clever ideas from groups in Stowmarket and round about.

Several bloggers have already featured  church tree festivals on their blogs - but  I need to fill a blog post so here are a few more  and apologies too as the photos are not very good.

I'm not sure when they started doing this festival but I've certainly been to look almost every year since we moved back to Mid Suffolk.

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Yesterday was sunny and bright all day which was lovely after a gloomy Thursday. I got the chocolate meringue gateau made and into the freezer ready to take on Christmas day along with chocolate brownies that are already in there. Decided that I'll make an apple crumble to take as a complete change from chocolate things for deserts. Next week I need to make cheese straws for EGS - and everyone else- but they are his favourite, the quick wartime Christmas pud for when BiL is here Boxing day and some speedy sausage rolls with ready rolled puff pastry and de-skinned chipolata sausages.

I've started perusing the RT for Christmas viewing. Tonight it's the final of Strictly of course and then there's a programme on 5 about the winter of 1962/3. I was 7 that winter and can remember some bits quite well - walking to school, which wasn't cancelled despite the 10 weeks of snow and freezing weather. The frozen school milk where the ice pushed the lid off; the big boys at school made long ice slides and going home from the Chapel Christmas party in one of the leaders cars we got stuck in a snow drift and had to bounce up and down in the back seat to get the car wheels to grip.

There was an interesting programme on Radio 4 yesterday about the weather too. In the Rare Earth science series - title Love of a Cold Climate. Here's a link for UK - don't think it works elsewhere - sorry.

Lovely to see that on TV next week there isn't just quizzy Monday on BBC 2 but quizzy Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday too and the same for the week after - lovely!

Vegetarian Christmas

 Aldi always have a few special vegetarian things in their freezers for Christmas. It's handy to have something a bit different for the main part of a meal that can be just popped in the oven. Individual  'bakes' - useful for people on their own. I wouldn't want to eat them everyday - too many strange ingredients, but useful now and again .

This is one of the packs  I bought. Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash Rostis.

I served up with a few Aldi ziggy chips and veg. The rosti was quite tasty with good flavour and plenty big enough. It looks burnt but that was just the 'basil melting centre'.

Then the opposite - a home-made nut roast. I had to search the blog for the recipe used earlier in the year,  as  I'd forgotten to add it to the recipe page and found it from back in February. HERE is the blog post. I had more nuts this time so upped everything else too and made a deeper loaf. Last year I cut into slices and froze in twos, which was a bit too much, this year as the loaf is deeper I've sliced, wrapped and frozen individually. The slices need to be defrosted before re-heating in the microwave. It made 7 good sized slices.

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The weather really was grim yesterday, it was still dark when I got up at quarter to eight, it was gloomy in the church in Stowmarket (tree festival photos another day) even though they had all the lights on. It started pouring at home just after midday and it was dark again long before 4pm.

I found a comment from few days ago that I'd not seen, it was from a reader from way up north in  the Faroe Islands! Wow! Included was a link to a collection of Christmas youtubes . I'll be having a look at some later - there are dozens!

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwykVSaCN9CRMr1C37wwT5gOcV0N6hCwa&si=AcAOVoJ4b1_zpuA2

Christmas Cards

I love receiving Christmas cards, I like finding Christmas cards from charity shops in the January Sales - just awfully bad at writing and sending them. I tried Sue's idea of 'getting to write cards' rather than 'Got to write cards' but it still took me days to get the job done and there are many less than the 40 I once wrote and sent.

I had several years when I made some - never all- of my cards. 2015 and 2017 using 3D decoupage sheets.

In 2019 I used photographs taken of  light-up picture decoration - a car-boot purchase- and put them into card blanks- in the days when all sorts of card blanks were available from Craft Creations - I do miss that company.

Since then all cards have been bought and I no longer have any Christmas card crafting bits and very few card blanks and now only have a dozen bought cards left for next year, so will need to find some in the sales.

I admire anyone who makes all the cards they send.

Very few cards have arrived via the postman/lady so far this Christmas. Instead a letter from HMRC  altering my tax code again - and not in a good way - from now until the new tax year. Oh bother!

After a very expensive December with too many bills, I'd better have a very frugal January and February. 

As I was deleting all the rubbish emails that had gathered in a day , I found this on the Next Door website posted by a Meryl in a village a few miles away. People post the most silly of things on this website which was supposed to be for recommendations for builders etc

I've received a Christmas card from a relative but she forgot to put the correct postage on so I'm being charged £1.50! Am I allowed to refuse the card? Cheers

There were 25 miserable comments all saying yes refuse it! I don't think I'd refuse - it might have a letter or a gift card inside!