...was our usual quiet togetherness. Reverting back to our student days in terms of drinking good beer and slobbing out. I baked the grandmother of all Christmas cakes...
hand blanching almonds - hours of fun for everyone! 
The lovely wood fairies called again, with six sumptuous sacks of logs, and Secret Santa left a mysterious bundle on the doorstep on Christmas Eve. Somehow 'he' knew I am in the middle of a tea towel famine. (Andy has used most of them to clean the bike with). Not only did I get a beautiful Emma Bridgewater tea towel which I can't quite bring myself to use, but a somewhat eccentric miscellany of coal, logs, a clockwork cowboy, fruit, nuts sprouts, chocolates and glittery stars. Eccentric, unless you know me well and how delighted I would be with it all. I think I know who it was though...
My Christmas SOSF match sent me delightful hand made ceramic decorations...thank you so much Sarah, they will be treasured. 
There was splendid Christmas box from another kind fairy - complete with sweet handpainted card...
jampacked with goodies, as every respectable hamper should be
"I would eat the world if I could get my jaws round it"...and a mere two days rest for Andy before he had to return to the Valhalla of retail where he is gainfully employed.
Next blog installment - Christmas card Heaven and the biggest 'Thank You' letter I have ever written.
Despite needing an initial defrosting, our little pot tree looked very pretty when he was dressed. He comes in every Christmas Eve and goes back outside on January the 1st. We like to keep our quiet celebrations short and special.
I bought him fourteen years ago, when he was a scruffy 10 inch urchin, and against the odds, he's thrived. Now he has finally burst his pot in a bid for freedom. 
Here he is on Christmas morning, being looked after by Oscar, my latest needle felt piece.
This year he is proudly displaying some beautiful gingerbread people, made by an old friend with whom we have recently re-made contact. Each one is delightfully hand painted and the room smells sweetly of spicy goodness.
The three of us trained together to be illustrators way back in the early 1990's. Now she makes wonderfully decorated cakes and cookies, I make felt toys and Andy wears his fingers to the bone as a supermarket manager supporting us. Which just goes to show how life takes unexpected turns. 
Every week before Christmas, I count the pennies in my penny pot. Usually it is spent on nice cheese and this year it was spent on very select cheese indeed. One piece, to be precise. Although we only have two shops in the village, one of them is an excellent deli, which specialises in local cheeses. There were only two of these 'Cerney Pyramids' left - unpasteurised goat's cheeses covered with ash and seasalt, from the village of North Cerney, just over the border in Gloucestershire. Being a premium product, they are not cheap. But the kind shopowner generously gave me a little discount as he knows that I am a hardcore gourmet cheese lover with very shallow pockets. Now it waits, like the rest of the world, for New Year's Eve, when it will be eaten with reverence. 
