Advent 6 hot chocolate

Thursday nights in our house tend to be fairly quiet ones in our house. It's a non homework night on a school week so we tend to kick back and relax a little as the week does take it's toll on Luke. 

Todays advent card instructed us to make up a jar of Jamie Oliver's epic hot chocolate, recipe found >>>>>>here<<<<<<<

And then try it out.  Luke loves whipped cream straight out of a can with his hot chocolate and I love adding a mild minty flavour by stirring with a candy cane :o)  All lovely.  I made a big jar of this earlier on in the year and it's starting to run low so it was great to replenish it tonight ready to share with Luke and maybe friends over the holidays. 

Advent 5

We got around to icing our gingerbread. Luke can have trouble with fine motor skills so we went for writing icing tubes as easier for him and little edible ball bearings :o) 

Here's Luke insisting he gets in on the action to show you his beautiful decorating skills. We won't mention how many balls we had to hoover up afterwards.

After posting our efforts on facebook Lauren and her Mummy wanted their own snowman :o)

I am not to clever with piping at the best of times but we had great fun so that is all that counts.

And for a very good friend and Lukes godmother this snowman was decorated specially so tomorrow he goes to his new home. Hope you enjoy him Julie x

Today was also they day Luke got to write a card to someone special and post it this evening.  Which he really enjoyed walking to the postbox and posting his card. 

Advent 4

Today's card contents were postponed. Life got scary/worrying/silly. So I amused Luke and Evsr with paper chains. Big hit :-)

Miserable and medication

Well I'm self medicating with chocolate covered coffee beans I forgot I bought Sunday!

I cut a chunk out of thumb last night and it hurts and throbs. I can do basic first aid so I'm ok. My only problem being is plasters don't stick to me. So using tape for now and I look like a cartoon character with it all taped up. Going to be interesting few days working around this one. Meanwhile. Mmmmmmm coffee beans and chocolate. Marriage made in heaven :-)

What's your go to treat for comfort?

Advent 3 with gingerbread

Day 3 of of our Advent calendar was a bit quieter than the weekend.  Was still lots of fun to be had.  The card read that we were making gingerbread stars for the Christmas tree.  It's not up yet but might as well be prepared.

So we washed our hands and donned our aprons and posed for this photo :o)

I had made the dough earlier in the afternoon and used recipe in the great British bake off showstoppers book. However Luke decided he wasn't that interested in stars and was more interested in snowmen. so we started of choosing our cutters and adding a heart one into the mix too.

The dough had been rested and was probably a little cold which made it crumbly but we rolled it out in small sections and it worked well like that 

Lots of concentration and a few ripped heads off snowmen later and we had 2 trays of shapes to bake at gas mark 4 for around 10 minutes

And the first lot out of the oven looked like this 

As it was a school night we were a little limited in what we could do as homework and exercises needed to be done. Nice crunchy ginger gingerbread shapes.  Very nice indeed.  Now where did I leave my piping bag and gold ball bearings??

Advent 2 with cheese!

Today we had a short lay in,  When I woke Luke he charged out of bed and down the stairs to open envelope number 2. Am curious to see if this will work on a school morning tomorrow though! Anyway todays adventure was to visit the French market nearby and buy a present for Ever (my beautiful granddaughter and Luke's niece) So off we went a bit tired from yesterday but still looking forward to it all..

We arrived and met a friend and started the day with a much needed coffee. We had visited another French market nearby before and were both impressed by them but this one seemed very empty and not half as big as others we had been to.  However we did get our french baguette Luke had been after and a selection of cheeses so it was a great success in that respect.  

After a bit more shopping we all decided we were all tired and had shopped enough and we all needed to say goodbye and go home and recover from 2 days of shopping. 

So after getting home it was obvious we needed some lunch, and what better than our bread and cheese? I remember Lorraine Pascal doing roasted garlic and baked Camembert before and decided to have a go without looking it up so in a baking dish I put in a little extra virgin olive oil with a squidge of honey, seasoning and a few sprigs of rosemary and just cut the tops off of garlic bulbs and placed cut side down in the dish and placed in a moderate oven while I had a quick shower. 

Around 25 minutes later I had decanted the cheese and placed back in this wooden tub minus rest of packaging and cut a cross into the top.  I placed this in with the garlic.  On the lower shelf I put the baguette to warm and go crispier for around 15 minutes.  I was a bit worried the garlic looked burnt black when I took it out of the oven but it was a sweet caramalised flavour not burnt. 

Luke had great fun squeezing garlic cloves out of their papery cases and onto his bread and dunking his bread into oozy cheese.

This was all that was left :o) We ate with Christmas carols gently playing in the background and chatting away about things we would like to do, War of the worlds the new generation, school holidays and Christmas trees.  Another delightful day where instead of just a bit of chocolate we made a few special memories and enjoyed each others company a little more than we would of done otherwise.  

Advent calendar

So here it is 1st December and the countdown to the big day starts. This year however I decided to do things a little differently with Advent calendars for Luke.  I get really annoyed in a way at the just chocolate advent calendars. Don't get me wrong chocolate is great but I also wanted to make Christmas a little more personal and fun again.  Somehow I think some people forget there is a lot of fun to be had in the lead up to Christmas. So I hatched a plan which involved a pack of small Christmas cards, a card holder with pegs and chocolate coins.  Plus a list of fun activities ready to lead up to Christmas.

In each card I put the activities for each day and a chocolate coin and attached them to the string and pegs like so

Then when the card has been opened then I am going to simply reattach it and we still have a pretty string of cards, even if they are all similar. 

This was the card for today.  In it it told Luke we were visiting town to do a little Christmas shopping and a coffee meet up with a friend of ours :o)  Also today was the day to write out his Christmas letter to Santa and we would post it tonight when we wandered down to watch Father Christmas switch on the villages Christmas lights tonight.

So Day one is a busy one and so far we have shopped and had our coffee with a friend. On the plus side I have got quite a few of the little presents I wanted out of the way and can wrap them later.We also bought a few cheap Christmas CDs and I am singing along to it as I type, feeling that Christmas spirit has eventually landed in our house.

Last but not least we won't forget to light our advent candle tonight.  And I have swapped my tea light candles around the lounge etc with Christmas scented candles :o)

I can't wait to share rest of Advent days with Luke with the activities and treats I have planned in the run up to Christmas :o)

To finish off the day we visited the village for the tree switching on ceremony.  Santa arrived via fire engine and was manic.  The pics are a little blurry sorry.

Lukes bubble gun flashed different colours giving illusion the bubbles were all full of light and colour as they flew off :o)

The day finished with chips from the local fish and chip shop.  Luke however was more impressed he had the puzzle pages of his new paper wrappings lol