The first day of Advent

In preparation for tomorrow, we spent a soggy hour sawing the bottom off (Denty having learnt the lesson two years ago) the soggy tree…

With nice Christmassy jazz music in the background, we set to work… It was light outside when we started, but by the time we finish (the dog dogs put up the star), it was dark.

Very tired, but very happy, I present to you…. our tree.

Christmas clay 5

Okay, so I happily continue making food based Christmas decorations. I made a bowl of  “ngiu lam mee foon” (beef noodles), a pan of English breakfast and a pot of moules marinaire.

When I happily showed Denty my handiwork, he asked “they are not really Christmassy, are they?”

Bread

Denty decided to buy a breadmaker… in the long run, it will provide a good healthy and cheap working lunch option.

For our first run, we made a white poppy loaf.

Christmas clay 4

I could not help making more dim sum… chicken’s feet, loh mai gai and Shanghai siu loong bau.

Christmas clay 3

I know that some may say that this is strictly not Christmassy, but what do they know?

Christmas clay 2

Because I had so much fun with my polymer clay, I continued to play with them.

Meet…

Wild mushrooms

While in Wales, the woodland and fields being so closeby (since it’s autumn), I tried to keep an eye out for mushrooms. I love mushrooms, mainly for eating. I especially love wild mushrooms.

Christmas clay

During our holiday in Wales, it rained a lot. I bought a stack of coloured polymer clay to entertain myself and I had a fantastic time making little figurines for our Christmas tree this year. I then baked them at 100c for 30 minutes to harden them.

My first attempt was a hedgehog.

The walk

While we were in Wales, Denty came down with a pretty bad case of the ‘flu. It was proper ‘flu with the fever and all, not the man-flu, contrived to get out of hiking type. Anyway, as he was unwell,  before it starts to rain again, I thought I could take a short walk into the village about a mile away to see if they have a little shop to get more paracetamol for Denty.

I had two choices, to walk the single track road or to take a supposed short cut over the hill. So I wandered out of the very long and uphill driveway…

Ruthlin, the cottage in Wales

To celebrate  the first anniversary of our marriage, Denty and I rented a little (well, not-so-little as it was a four-bedroomed barn conversion) in the middle of nowhere in Wales. The building was a barn once belonging to a nearby-ish farm called Ruthlin Mills, hence the converted cottage was named Ruthlin.

It was a mere 200 mile journey, so Denty and I thought it would be nice to make a little detour to visit Stonehenge on the way there.  You see, about 20 years ago, little Denty found a Stonehenge souvenir bookmark in church and has used it ever since. What was once a leather bookmark with the respectable amount of tassels is now a sorry piece of cow hide with 3 and a bit strands of tassel. Since Denty had never seen Stonehenge, we thought it would be a great opportunity to get him a new bookmark.

After the little detour, we continued our journey to Ruthlin.