I had to share my Christmas cooking with you. The mincemeat is in jars, the puddings are steamed and stored away and the cake is currently cooling down. It smells gorgeous and I am regretting making a round cake - if it was a square one we could have cut off a bit to eat now and no one would ever know!!

Delia recommends feeding the cake weekly with brandy - I’m not sure I have enough left to do that and we’re not going to buy any more. Plus, I need to remember to keep a bit for setting fire to the pudding.

I feel really pleased with myself for getting it done this year. I can’t remember the last year that we did this, it was definitely before we moved here. I don’t remember doing it when we lived in Wiltshire, and it was possibly before we moved to Amsterdam in which case it would have been Christmas ‘96. So it was a tradition for 5 years and then for one reason or another it just didn’t happen (new babies, depression, whatever). I really want to get back into the tradition of making them from now on. I’ve enjoyed it, it wasn’t as much hassle as I recalled, and well, it makes me feel like a better housewife in a small way.

Mind you, I may not be saying that after the 10th batch of mince pies - I vaguely recall making about 144 mince pies last time. Not all eaten by me - they’re handy to take to friends houses when going round for coffee, Craig used to take them into work with him and there’s always something going on where they appreciate some home baked goodies. I just hope my friends like mince pies!!

Did I mention the Mermaid socks I’m making? The second one went slightly wrong, not sure what happened, but it got thrown into a corner in disgrace. I just couldn’t face picking it back up again and fixing it, but tonight I did. I’ve ended up undoing almost all of it - I decided it was easier to do that than get frustrated at trying to fix it. So, off I go with it again. It’s fairly quick to do so it won’t take too long to get back to where I was and then hopefully it will behave itself when I turn the heel.

I’ve got lots of knitting projects I want to get going with but I like to only have one WIP at a time. I’ve got two at the moment so really shouldn’t start anything else. But maybe just one more….

I’m hoping I’ve got my exercise mojo back. Last week I really could not be bothered and the diet went out of the window - it doesn’t help working with lots of gorgeous cakes and Panini’s either. But this week I’m back on track, totally motivated and while I probably will have the odd cake at work I will be figuring it into my daily allowance. I’ve upped my step target to 9,000 a day which does usually mean jogging on the spot through the nightly CSI advert breaks but it’s good for me. Isn’t it?

I think we may have the start of something going round the children at the moment. Poor Ellie has a high temp and Alfie seems to be developing one. Hopefully it will pass through quickly!