Learning Lessons in Mummyography: First Christmas

Showing posts with label First Christmas. Show all posts

Thursday, 27 December 2012

A Couple of Christmas Recipes... Tried and Tested.

Before you start to wane at the mention of MORE festive cheer these recipes (though they worked great for Christmas) were not particularly Christmassy so I thought I'd share...

Goats Cheese and Red Onion Tarts:

Recipe I found here. I used the same pastry recipe as I did for my mince pies and I garnished the dish with rocket dressed in balsamic vinegar and olive oil. This was a bit of an "IN YOUR FACE LAST YEARS PREGNANT ME!!!!" and it was goooooood.

White Chocolate and Raspberry Cheesecake:

This recipe started out as this recipe but as recipes do it evolved to...

Ingredients

180g Digestive biscuits
75g butter
200g Raspberries
120g Sugar
500g Cream cheese
200g White chocolate
1/2-1 tsp vanilla extract

Crush the biscuits. I used a blender, you could bash them in a sandwich bag with a rolling pin.

Melt the butter and mix the crushed biscuits in. Spread around the bottom of a 20cm cake tin and bake at 180 for 5 minutes. Leave to cool.

Mix the sugar, cream cheese and vanilla in a bowl. Again I used a blender (love that thing) but you could do it by hand and work off a few of the impending calories.

Melt most (Leave a few squares for grating later) of the chocolate (microwave or on the hob) and fold the melted chocolate and most of the raspberries in to the mixture. Don't mix too much. You want the chocolate swirled through and the raspberries kept whole.

Chill overnight.

Decorate with left over raspberries and grated chocolate.

VOILA! Unbelievably good cheesecake which takes NO longer than half an hour! :D

The Alexander Christmas Experience...

When I was a kid I never really understood why my Mum got SO excited about Christmas. I guess I just thought "but your presents are rubbish creams and perfumes and Dad has to buy them because you're too old for Father Christmas... What's to be excited about for you?!"

This year I found out. Oh it's so exciting. I'd even go as far as to say Christmas as a Mum is MORE exciting than Christmas as a child.

To be privileged enough to give your baby presents.

To feed your family good food.

To sip a glass of something festive.

To be able to give your loved ones their Christmas under your roof.

It was amazing from start to finish and I'm still riding the feel good wave of festive glow!

I feel so lucky and so grateful. I feel so loved and in love. What a wonderful time we had... MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone!

Sunday, 23 December 2012

Silent Sunday... Let the Celebrations Commence...

Friday, 21 December 2012

Christmas Baking

This is NO foodie blog. Granted. But lets forget that for a moment and marvel at my efforts to pretend for a day...

Tomorrow we will host an open house for our friends, family and neighbours. We're offering mulled wine, some baked goods and bucket load of festive spirit. I have been FAR too enthusiastic with my invitations and I can only hope people bring coats and so are happy to stand in the garden...

A couple of recipes I plan to serve up are...

My Mum's recipe for mince pies;

500g Stork baking margarine (or any other butter)
1k self raising flour
3 jars of mincemeat (shop bought... like I said... this is no foodie blog)
2 beaten eggs

Crumble flour and butter into a breadcrumb like consistency with your fingers. Make a "well", pour in water, knead into a dough. Don't overwork.

Roll out to 5mm thickness. Use large circle cutter to make bases. Add a teaspoon of mincemeat. Brush egg around the edges. Cut out a smaller "lid". Place on lid. Brush top with egg. Bake at 180 celsius for 10-15 minutes.

Gingerbread;

I found this one.

Chief in charge of tasting...

Did I mention I LOVE her?

"I'm getting a hint of winter snowflakes with an undertone of blackcurrant and old boots..."

Lesson:

Bake. It's Christmas. Shop online (with wine) and sit in all day baking whilst you wait for deliveries.

Wednesday, 19 December 2012

Christmas Stress & Measuring Expectations...

I am sure I am not alone in my childhood Christmas memories being littered with such Mummy catch-phrases as...

"I get NO thanks from NO ONE!"

"I'M JUST TRYING TO GET ORGANISED!"

"I suppose you all think the Christmas fairy organised all this?!"

And other such theme tunes from the festively pressurised.

Now I get this is my first Christmas as a Mum and all I have to worry about is one little baby and a husband. But mix in half a dozen December birthdays, the fact we're hosting Christmas and some of THE most disorganised family members known to man and I'm about ready to bust out a shrill "I get NO thanks from NO ONE!"

I have a glimmer of it now. I don't like it. I don't want to go there. I want to be a source of fun for my children. I don't want to set myself up for being the bad guy but I also don't want to feel unappreciated.

There's a balance to be struck somewhere. It involves asking the following...

Who am I doing this for?

What is my goal?

Are my expectations realistic?

Am I so busy building "perfect" memories that I am missing the real stories being written?

I need to measure all this. Slow down. Absorb.

A few snaps from our trip to Jimmy's Farm... The PERFECT spend of a sunny winters day...

Lesson

This will be the most wonderful Christmas. The only variable is if I am really there to see it.

Monday, 3 December 2012

Snap Your Whipper Snappers #3

We're baaaaaaaack! For week THREE of our blog hop series! My choice for my first feature is this gorgeous snap from over at The Beekeeper's Granddaughter I love how he's stood up straight for his picture and those cheeks are simply SCRUMPTIOUS! Plus as a Brit (who's tree have to be imported) I LOVE the idea of being able to pick and cut down your own tree, it looks amazing!! Thanks for linking up!!!

Charlotte has picked a great feature over at The Life of Mummy Rawles so go check it out and maybe if you linked up last week it's YOU...!

So here's the hop... If you take an excessive amount of photographs of your little ones then THIS is the blog hop for you...

Snap your Whipper Snappers

is the third in a series of six weekly blog hops we will be hosting where you are invited to link up posts featuring pics of your little pickles!

We will leave the hop open Monday to Friday and then next week Charlotte and I will each

FEATURE OUR FAVOURITE!

Here's how it works...

1. Follow your hosts...

Learning Lessons in Mummyography

The Life of Mummy Rawles

2. Grab the hop button and post it on the post you want considered for a feature.

Sunday, 2 December 2012

OH Christmas Tree! OH Christmas Tree!

Whenever someone starts a new relationship or starts a family they, like me, like you, love to think about starting new traditions with it. We love to think of us doing the same thing years from now. We love to think about us telling people how many years we've been doing it.

Essentially we want to create and tell stories.

You could say it's that kind of idealism and chocolate box inspired expectations of perfection that impose stress on us at this time of year. My response is that as long as your traditions embrace the weird, the unconventional and the unaffected then these little rituals are what anchor you to your loved ones at this whirlwind time of year.

Well here we are a new family at our first Christmas. I want to drink it all in. Snap it. Blog it. Bottle it and keep it close to me forever and ever. I worry with more babies and time gone by the novelty will lessen. I suspect it won't. Steve would tell me it won't because I'm an eternal romantic (though he'd use a word like "dafty").

Still I worry it might and as a result I'm throwing myself feet first into the festive fever. I'm a retailers dream, sucked into every cheesy slogan-ed festive themed baby onesie I see and if I spend any more time on Not on the Highstreet I may need to remortgage.

I do not need every piece of festive paraphernalia personalised with Euna's name. I do not need every piece of festive paraphernalia personalised with Euna's name. I do not need every piece of festive paraphernalia personalised with Euna's name. (Repeat.)

So here's the first of our festive traditions... Tree shopping.