Christmas day prep

So far I have made pate and homemade stock, baked a meringue for my Eton mess and baked toffee pecan brownies.  The spiced red cabbage is braising and the turkey is stuffed with herbs, carrots, celery, onion and garlic, as well as having a layer of herb butter under its skin - it is now waiting to go in tomorrow.  The stuffing is made and ready to go into the oven tomorrow and the pancake batter ready to be cooked for breakfast tomorrow.  All that is left is to par boil the potatoes and finish off a bit of tidying, then it's a glass of bailey's and a brownie!

A peak at some of the food.....

Chicken liver, fig and port pate.  Looks gross, tastes delicious!  And not for the diet-conscious either!

 

Turkey!

I also finally finished the kids quilts.......and despite the many amateur mistakes (it is only the second project I've done on a sewing machine), I am so pleased with how they look and very proud of myself.  A lot of hard work and time has gone into their making.  From the hours I spent trawling the internet and the local sewing shop choosing and sourcing fabrics, to the many hours I've spent in the middle of the night sat at my sewing machine (often times cursing it - especially when the thread kept snapping and I had to unpick and redo my stitches about 10 times!!!), to finishing the quilts by hand tying them and adding the buttons,  And here are my masterpieces.....

the front of Jasmine's quilt

a close up to try and show the different buttons used

a peek at the back

The back of Ben's quilt - I put the buttons on this side because they didn't look right againts the elephant print

A close up of the buttons - Ben got to pick these out for himself, though he didn't know what they were for...

The front. with the gorgeous elephant fabric from Japan

the front and back together

And how did I manage to keep the kids occupied whilst I have been beavering away?  Well, worried that they were too quiet, I went to go see what was up and found them like this

Now that is a really difficult puzzle, but they were doing really well (Ben is wearing the chinese suit from their dressing up box that he put on yesterday and went to bed in - he's still in it as I type...)

When they got fed up with this, they resorted to playfighting - cue tears and strops.  To entertain them some more I hid gold and silver chocolate coins around the house and had them go find them.  When they got them all, I allowed them to eat one every time they completed a task.  First task was to make their beds.  Second was to tidy the mess in the playroom.  Third was to watch a cartoon (there has to be some fun!) and lastly, before daddy got home and saved the day, they had to go and read a book each.  This left me to cook and blog!