Ooooh, it’s Christmas Eve!

I think I love the build up to Christmas more than Christmas itself.

After a month of reading Christmas stories to the kids at bedtime, of our evenings being lit only by twinkly Christmas lights, of Christmas music and Christmas cookies, and hand-making Christmas presents and watching Grinchy movies and and and… well then the day itself arriving can only be a little bittersweet, can’t it. I’m never ready for December and it’s twinkly lights to end.

Every year I make stollen, because my mother makes stollen every year and I am a big ol tradition stealer. That and the fact that Christmas cake is GROSS! Gross I tell you! So normally I make stollen on Christmas eve, but daring soul that I am, I broke with tradtition this year and made it yesterday.

I don’t know where all the christmas “cake” decorations have gone. There are supposed to be deer. I inherited most of them from Hubby’s grandparents, and they are seriously old-school. I was helping lug boxes when they moved out of their farm house and was given free range of a stair-landing full of boxes of ‘throwing away things’. I took the tin of cake decorations. Including this lil girl and her teddy

and lots of santas in varying states of deformity

Friend N came around last night for a bottle of wine and a spa and we stuffed ourselves full of stollen for good measure. And christmas cookies that her mama had baked for her and sent right around from the other side of the world. Aww!!

And then we sat in the spa in the rain and the dark having a big ol moan about life talking and drinking wine before coming in to sit bathed in twinkly fairy light and eat a little more stollen. For good measure, you understand. Then some to take home.

And because of course, there is no point at all in the world of making one stollen when you could make two -

- I am taking the other with us to LMS’s house today for christmas eve playing and feasting. Stollen, avocados, brownie, christmas cookies – what more could you need? Other than toast, because what avocado is without toast I do not want to know.

Our last year’s christmas eve “post-stollen-feasting with LMS” photo is one of my favourites still – despite being taken on my phone and completely crappy in every regard.

I call it an afterglow photo – full of happy memories of happy moments with squishy friends… what christmas is all about after all.

That and stollen.

PS. I wrote this this morning and then my blog decided it hated me and wouldn’t let me log back in for the rest of the day and also the camera batteries died and we all know that what is a christmas post without photos if not nothing at all that’s what.

So now it’s evening and I’m back to say that grr to people who drive too fast on corners in heavy rain not wearing a seatbelt, causing fatal collisions, causing the fire siren to go off, causing LMS to spend Christmas Eve Day doing fire fightery things instead of eating stollen with me. But all is not lost (for me anyway, maybe so for the family of the driving too fast on wet corners person) because friend L popped round instead and even though by then I was far too stuffed full of stollen to eat another bite, Lil Miss 15 months tucked a tidy amount away and there’s nothing quite like a good ol cuppa tea anyway. Friend L brought me roses from her garden. Stunningly orange ones.  *love!!*   Accompanied by a christmas card -

- and this morning a pressie arrived from luffly Lou, accompanied by not one but THREE christmas cards – me thinks she must have heard of the naked christmas card wire predicament. Which by the way, is now entirely healthy and un-naked, making Sarah Bean a very happy bean indeed.

Photo last night, so now – add four

One part of the pressie was this necklace – i of course loooove it

and naturally (in more than one sense of the word) have been wearing it ever since.
Therefore please excuse the christmas pimple.

And merry christmas to the internets.
And you lot.
mwah
xx