Christmas Visitors

Hello there, I hope everyone has had themselves a happy Christmas and New Year.  Mum and Dad came to stay with us over Christmas, and we went all out to make it as homemade as possible, using our produce when we could.  We didn't go out once in five days!  We stuffed ourselves on turkey, ham, seafood, fruit, homemade treats and our vegetables - no-one starved that's for sure! 

I made Ian Parmenter's Australian Lighter Xmas Pudding which was excellent.  The only booze in it is a can of beer, I used Guiness stout.  And it has a lot of macadamia nuts and dried apricots along with the usual dried fruit.  And it can be made only a couple of days before Xmas.  Recommended!

Amongst all the other Xmas fare I made mince pies for the first time ever.  They were delicious!  It's always so satisfying to find a good recipe, this one is indeed a keeper.  Even though the pastry has lemon juice in it which I found a bit scary and just plain wrong, but it tasted very nice.

Xmas morning and the sharing of gifts.  We were all a bit sheepish to see how much alcohol we had given to each other! :-) 

 

My favourite present, and the one that made me cry like a baby is this painting (our wall isn't really pink, my camera does odd things sometimes!).  When I was about 7 or 8, a uni student knocked on our door, trying to sell his oil paintings, and he managed to persuade mum to part with a small amount of money for this painting.  I have always loved it, it seemed ever so mysterious to me as a child, particularly as mum and dad had it hung on a small piece of wall around a corner so it didn't get a lot of light, and I used to often wonder who those people were and what they were doing.  Anyway, I was astounded and delighted to receive it as a Xmas gift and I am thrilled to bits!  Thank you! xx

We wanted to show mum and dad right around our property but it is a bit of a hike up and down the hill so Steve brought out the carriage and drove mum and dad around in 4WD style so they could see everything.

 Off they go down the northern firebreak. 

After a relaxing break, doing not much work outside at all, we said goodbye to mum and dad (it was lovely to have you visit xx), then set to work putting Xmas away for another year.  Something I like to do nowadays is cut all the Xmas cards up into gift tags for the following year.  So much prettier and more interesting than the $1 pack of stick-on gift tags.  :-)

Then we had a day of sitting comatose then back to work! :-)  We went to the tip today and tried to put the recycling into the big bins very quietly so other tip patrons wouldn't hear - lots of clinking from those drinkie poo empties!  ha ha ha