Merry Christmas!

Today has been a bit of a crazy day. I guess christmas is supposed to be a bit mental though so I won't worry too much about it.

It was just my parents, my sister, her boyfriend and me. lovely. :) my Nan is staying at my Aunt's round the corner so we saw pretty much my entire family on christmas eve & we'll see them agian tomorrow.

Kirstie came over before I'd managed to get dressed (PJs slippers borrowed dressing gown etc..massive hair)... My mum made the Jamies waffles for breakfast so she got to have christmas breakfast with us (I'd reccomend using a dessert spoon for the baking powder & adding vanilla essence if they're not to go with a fry up- yummy with toffee sauce!)

Pretty much as soon as breakfast was done we had to do bubbly wine and presents- Ray told me she'd got me a christmas day dress so we had to find it before I could have a shower..any excuse..we're just big kids- so she arrived with John as I got out of the shower.
After that our day has been a whirlwind of baileys and wrapping paper.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR MY CHRISTMAS PRESENTS IF YOU READ THIS BEFORE YOU GET A PROPER THANK-YOU!

we ended up haing lunch at 4pm- take 2 with the veg coz we all got engrossed in other things and boiled everything dry.. oops..
otherthan that it was quite possibly the best christmas dinner we've ever had! with Cludeo crackers! winner!

we follwed this up with thge australian christmas pudding (I may post this recipie if I can find it)..over which we poured baileys..so we had to finish the baileys off in our coffee..

And then for Cludeo.
this is best attempted sober if you want to have any idea what is happening. we didnt.

"But how do you know it's not Rev. Green?!"
"Dad dropped him on the floor earlier"

all topped off with more coffee and "the kings speech" because we missed all the good stuff on telly peeling emergency sprouts to replace the smouldering ones flung all over the patio.

Standard Christmas. True story.

Thank you hayley! 

Merry christmas in many languages from Amanda!

Thank you for my things! :)

Our muddley christmas tree! :)

Kirstie's home made wrapping paper! Very impressed!

And breakfast- the waffles I was off on one about before! tasted soo much better than they look..

Me.  Power dressing.

Ray and her network rail man torch. 

Ray and her harmonica. as a child she found my dads harmonica and spent who whole day running round breathing through it. hopefully she'll be better this time.

John-john. earplugs.

Cludeo crackers!

Cluedo. intense.

Oxford when Mr Traff came to visit & the passport dash

Wandering- Unicorn on ship street in oxford- it's a treasure trove. the window is "dressed" seasonally- believe it or not- and the whole shop is FULL of things you NEED.

It's run by a slightly scary woman and you have to ask her for the thing you want and then she'll dig it out.

no official opening times. if the door is ajar then its open. if its locked its shut. 

]

Things!

I think this looks awesome- we need one!- see, things we need.

"do not park bicycles against the railings"

Gloucester green flea market.

Cameras! £20 each! HEAVEN.

we wandered round christchurch college too..muddy..

Baby Olly

Mulled wine

An easy mulled wine recipe for the festive season, brimming with Christmassy spice and a kick of sloe gin.

Ingredients

• 1 bottle red wine
• 60g/2oz demerara sugar
• 1 cinnamon stick
• grated nutmeg
• 1 orange, halved
• 1 dried bay leaf
• 60ml/2fl oz sloe or damson gin (optional)

Preparation method

1. Put the wine in a saucepan with the orange, sugar, bayleaf and the spices.
2. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved. Taste to see if you want the wine sweeter, and add more sugar to taste.
3. Off the heat, stir in the sloe or damson gin if you are using it.
4. Strain into heatproof glasses and serve at once.

Jamie's waffles and hot chocolate

Griddle-pan waffles

Jamie: I'm a little bit in love with this. I was experimenting with different types of waffles, trying lots of ways of cooking them and looked at a griddle pan and thought... YES! And you know what, it works like a charm - beautifully golden, crisp waffles every time.

Serves 4 to 6

2 large free-range eggs
300ml semi-skimmed milk
¼ teaspoon salt
225g self-raising flour
2½ level tablespoons baking powder
100g unsalted butter, plus an extra knob

1. Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk with the milk. Add the salt, sift in the flour and baking powder then whisk together until fully combined. Melt the butter, allow it to cool slightly, then gradually stir it through the mixture. After this point, it's important not to stir the mixture any more and to leave it to rest for at least 30 minutes before cooking.2. Pop your griddle pan on a high heat so it's screaming hot, add a small knob of butter, jiggle it all around the bars and as soon as it's melted scoop in your batter and spread it around to fill the pan. You can make smaller waffles, if you prefer, by dotting the mixture into the pan.3. Lower the heat to medium, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, or until lightly golden on the bottom. Now, this bit's quite tricky so you need to be confident - flip the waffle over and continue to cook for another 8 to 10 minutes, or until golden and cooked through. Give the waffle an extra couple of minutes on each side to crisp up, then serve. 4. I've served mine on a board, drizzled with maple syrup and some delicious, molten hot chocolate, but you can serve your waffle with whatever you like from bacon, egg and maple syrup to berries and yoghurt, spinach and a poached egg, or just simply sprinkled with a little ground cinnamon.


Epic hot chocolate

Jamie: "This hot chocolate is off the scale. It's so simple to make and is much better than that shop-bought stuff you get, which is often full of rubbish and probably hasn't got much chocolate in it anyway. I don't want you to feel cheated, I want you to have the real thing... life's too short not to."
Serves 8 to 10

2 pints semi-skimmed milk
For the epic hot chocolate mix
2 tablespoons Horlicks
2 tablespoons cornflour
3 tablespoons icing sugar
4 tablespoons quality organic cocoa
100g quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), finely grated
a pinch of ground cinnamon
a pinch of sea salt

1. Pour the milk into a large pan, and bring almost to the boil over a medium heat. 2. Meanwhile, add all the chocolate mix ingredients to a large jar and give it a good shake to combine. You need around 10 heaped tablespoons of the chocolate mix for this amount of milk. Simply spoon the chocolate mix into the hot milk, give it a good whisk and leave to bubble away for a few minutes before serving. You're looking for that gorgeous, thick, almost claggy, knockout texture.

Christmas cake

sooo.. On arrival home we were assigned a task- decorate the christmas cake... always a dangerous position to be in. mum went out for some drinkies with the girls= no supervision.

Ray wanted to make penguins to put on the top- so whilst we were colouring the fondant icing black we thought it would be a good opportunity for a wind up.

When I was a kid- like about 4 or 5 someone let me decorate the christmas cake. At school I must have been taught about how christmas is jesus's birthday. so, the cake had a big happy birthday in the middle..and a merry christmas, and candles, and ballerinas and all the little christmas statues accrued over many many years. the whole cake was jam packed (the cake was squeezed and jammed and crammed as full as it could be..etc).

I think that could have been fine on its own, except every time anyone went anywhere near the cake I insisted we light the candles and sing "happy birthday" to jesus.

we recreated this marvel.

and got John to send mum a photo to her phone...and waited.

In the mean time we decorated the cake with some rather fat sticky penguins.it looked pretty cool in a childish way, but it was a really good laugh!
I love decorating the cake- I'm shockingly bad at it, but I am very "creative". perhaps cake design is not a future career.

The photo we sent- everyone needs xmas cake elephants!

Ray and her penguin

The masterpiece

festive science

Owain Williams;

new mnemonic for remembering the order of the planets:
Mary's 'Virgin' Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour

mooching round london (and Harrods)

China town..it was lovely but much nicer when its not piddling down! I got some jasmine tea though- from the chinese super market.

Newspaper!

Cakes in the china town patisseries - I love the little arms on the snowman! how sweet is he?!

Piccadilly circus christmas lights- and some traditional red double decker busses.

"art on the tube" I love this tube map cover- only because I'm pretty sure this is how most people feel the tube map actually looks when they're desperately trying to figure out where they're going.

Traff shopping for a new coat..only £700...

Crystal encrusted multi gym anyone? O_o

Traff shrunk in the rain!..maybe not...giant comic book in harrods.

More giant books!

Traff the art dealer! we found him a new vocation!

Afternoon tea in Harrods

For my Birthday, Traff bought me afternoon tea for two at harrods- so we finally took ourselves off to the capital for a food adventure... I've been sooo excited about this!

The festive looking georgian tearooms..very posh!

Tea, cake, scones, jam..yummmy.. we we're stuffed after the scones and we had to REALLY try to eat the patisserie cakes!

I did a bit of experimenting and tried to make fizzy tea with sparking water and the jasmine tea I ordered..don't ever do that. it's genuinely awful and really not the best idea for the poshes tearoom in london...

Traff, squashing his scones.

teeny weeny cakes!

Harrods christmas lights! :D yay!

snow!

Yeah! it's almost christmas! :D 

we had snow a couple of days ago but it didn't settled and turned into insane hailstones- today it didnt settle properly- in the end it rained and washed it all away but it's still christmassy.

it was -1 today but felt like -3 (according to the BBC) with the windchill factor, so this photo was taken from my kitchen window- in my PJs! thankfully it didn't stop the trains and buses and its not really a cardiff level of snow, but still, its exciting!

Hairstyles

I am cutting my hair for charity in january, so I will be spending a fair time now experimenting with styles this festive season will be mostly spent looking crazy;

I'm cutting my hair for charity in january- for every £50 raised I'll cut off 1 foot of hair- I have 3 foot of hair-it's down to my bum.

the money will be for the blue cross and I'll donate the hair to the little princess trust for children who have lost their hair due to accident or injury.

This is the link for my just giving page (£60 raised so we're into the 2nd foot):

http://www.justgiving.com/L-McDonnell

this is the little princess trust:

http://www.littleprincesses.org.uk/AboutUs/Emily.aspx

Watch the video and tell me this isn't worthwhile- I've never seen a kid with such a bit smile. it makes me cry every time!

Bento box!

This was my 1st ever bento box and it was AMAZING! I will be eating more like this in future! winter is too cold for sushi. 

Books and babies exhibition at Cambridge university library

And my to buy reading list: