Christmas.

Christmas is so busy.  I'm sure you know that!  So I've had a mini blogging holiday for a couple of weeks, and have come back refreshed.  Sadly, I was so busy and overwhelmed (in a good way) with food and cooking, that I didn't photograph most of the fantastic meals I've enjoyed.  Suffice to say, I am happy to go a few weeks without ham, stuffing, gravy and custard, no matter how good they are!

Here is a great big post of photos from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day...

My little sister and Tabitha in their 'Christmas costumes' on Christmas eve.  Q is a Christmas Fairy, Tabitha is a plum pudding fairy:

On Christmas eve, I bottled up around a dozen glass jars of homemade roasted almond praline powder.  It's so easy, delicious, and makes a nice gift.  I'll post instructions one day soon, but basically you just make a dark caramel (sugar and water), pour it over roasted almonds, then blitz the whole thing to a powder in the food processor.  It's delicious over ice cream, or sprinkled over the top of muffins, in cakes, added to ganache, with yoghurt and many other uses:

We had people over for dinner on Christmas eve - my parents, sister, and aunt and uncle (who are around my age).   I just did a nice basic meal - a couple of roast chickens with homemade stuffing (sage, onion, pine nut and bacon.  I'll post the recipe on the blog soon), gravy, roast potatoes and pumpkin, roast garlic and shallots, lovely sourdough bread and salted butter (for mopping up the gravy).  To finish, Christmas pudding with homemade custard and homemade ice cream.

You can get the pudding covered and ready in the morning, or even the day before.  Then you pop it onto steam an hour before the chooks go into the oven, and you don't need to think about it for a few hours, until serving (you might need to top the water up once or twice):

You can also get the potatoes ready - cut into small cubes, tossed in olive oil, lemon juice, salt and rosemary.  I never peel potatoes for roasting.  So much of the flavour (and almost all of the nutrients) are in the skin and just below.

Shallots and garlic ready for roasting.  For 8 people, I do around 30 shallots and a few heads of garlic.  People seem to eat loads, and they are delicious squished onto sandwiches, cold, if there are any leftovers.

2 large chooks (size 15 or so) with veggies and pudding is ample for 8 people.  I get gorgeous organic chooks from the market, and find they have so much flavour that you don't need to eat quite as much.

With piles of crispy roast potatoes, and plenty of sweet, soft roast pumpkin, everyone had third helpings.  This makes me happy.

This is a 4.5kg pudding.  Between the 8 of us, we ate well over half - with rivers of warm vanilla custard and homemade vanilla ice cream (I was generously gifted with an ice cream maker, from my Godfamily, for Christmas, which I have already put to good use a few times.  I'll post on it soon).

Last thing before bed on Christmas Eve, Tabitha's stocking was filled and hung on her door handle.  This is the same stocking I used as a child - it is quite small and simple compared to stockings sold nowadays, which I find pleasingly nostalgic:

In the morning, Tabitha was thrilled to find her stocking, and her new table and chairs!  What do you think her favourite present from her stocking was?  A toothbrush.  What can I say?  The kid loves to brush her teeth!  This one had pink and purple cats on it:

Once we were awake, the stocking was unpacked, and we were dressed, we drove straight to my parents' house, which is where most of Tabitha's gifts were.

You may recall, last Christmas (Tabitha's first) I decided to follow an American tradition, and choose four main gifts:  Something You Want, Something You Need, Something To Do and Something To Read.  Along with this, I fill a small stocking with a few little gifts.

I reasoned that this would prevent me from going overboard (I start Christmas shopping in October, and knew I'd keep getting 'just one more thing...' for Tabby unless I set a limit).  I also wanted to keep the gift-giving relatively modest, to allow her to appreciate her presents (and knowing that she would get lots, lots more from other people).  Finally, I liked the idea that, long term, this strategy allows you to remain relatively fair when shopping for more than one child - each child gets the same number of gifts (four plus some stocking treats).

This year, the Something You Want gift was a little pull-along wooden cat (Janod Crazy Cat) which Tabby has seen and clutched at our favourite toy store, Jasper Junior, many times in the past months.

The Something You Need gift was a wooden table and four chairs - she's at an age where she often prefers to eat her meals at a little table, and it's great for tea parties, colouring in etc.  We bought the set online from Nanny Annie - I looked at quite a few sets around the place, Ikea has some good ones as well, as does Windmill Educational Toys.

The Something To Do gift was from Windmill - a fantastic wooden toy

The Something To Read choice was a copy of the divine book Sally's Secret by Shirley Hughes (of the Naughty Little Sister books).  I love, love, love Shirley Hughes, and this is one of my favourites.  The illustrations are beautiful and detailed, and the story is sweet and inspires creative play.  I recommend this book as part of every picture book collection!

Here is a snap of some of Tabitha's presents - you can see the pull-along cat, the book, the table-and-chairs (they are sitting on the table), the hammer-ball activity.  You can also see the brilliant 'Wheely-Bug' leather pig ride-on from my parents, the beautiful tin tea set from my friend Amy, a pair of 101 Dalmatian PJs from Peter Alexander from my parents,  a colourful silk 'balloon ball', and at the bottom right, the items from her stocking...

Here is a closeup of her stocking contents (minus the toothbrush, which she clung to) - a t-shirt with milk and cookies, a little box of gingerbread baby cookies, a few little dog figurines, a harmonica, and a few hair clips:

Here are the presents for our family and my parents and sister, under the tree in their living room:

Tabitha and I wore white.  We even managed to stay clean all day - it's a Christmas Miracle!

Here is our little family:

Tabitha followed by little sister around like a shadow all morning - and my sister's tiny dog, Posie, in turn followed Tabitha around (she has learnt that Tabby often leaves a trail of delicious crumbs behind her).  Q was so excited to receive both a bicycle and a skateboard!

Tabby was thrilled to bits with her ride-on pig.  Mum and dad have plenty of roomy wooden floors for riding around on, so she had a ball:

Posie looked on with interest - she was a little alarmed by this sliding, gliding pig-person:

Her face is so excited here - she really loves tearing paper off and finding out what is underneath:

Taking her pull-along cat for a walk:

Doesn't she have the most beautiful hair?!  So soft, straight and shiny.  It doesn't need any brushing, and always smells delicious.

With grandpa Gra.  Loves him, she does!

Offering one of Posie's rawhide chews to her toy dog:

Q and T were both bursting with excitement all morning!

Concentrating hard on her hammer ball game:

It is tradition, for us, to all have a big breakfast of plenty of croissants, jam, juice and tea.

I love Tabitha's little white dress so much.  Would you believe it's Target?  Probably the cheapest dress she owns, but without a doubt one of the nicest:

We had Christmas Lunch at The Daddy's aunt's home.  Tabitha slept right through the whole thing!  In her porta-cot from 12 until just after 3.  This gave us a chance to enjoy a nice leisurely lunch.  I brought the pudding and also the ham (8kg free range, which I glazed with maple syrup, Dijon mustard, brown sugar, orange marmalade and studded with cloves, then glazed sitting in a tray with an inch of apple cider).

After Tabby woke up, we dressed her in the little Plum Pudding Fairy outfit.  She looked too cute for words.

We had a really brilliant Christmas - Tabitha was in fine form, dancing and laughing and singing and really loving all of her presents.  I think 18 months is a lovely age for Christmas!

In milestone news, I started keeping track of Tabitha's words last month, and was really shocked to learn that she had over 50 words at 18 months!  I don't know if this is average, above or below, but it seems like a lot to me!  Of course, most of them are pronounced very strangely (and some would only be understood by myself - I know that Bobble means Bottle, for her water bottle).  And now, only a few weeks later, I have had to stop keeping track - there would easily be over 80 words, I'd say.  Every day there seems to be a few new ones.  All sorts of funny things like 'rough' and 'smooth', and of course the standard toddler classics such as 'mine', 'more', 'cake' and 'poo!!!'