A few mince pies and a lot of library books

I wasn't going to make enough mince pies to feed an army, but look what happened. This is 1lb flour and the recipe for sweet shortcrust is on my separate recipe page about half way down. They are all in the freezer to be shared around various family over different festive days.

A large heap of library books  were collected on Friday, lots that had been ordered have turned up all at once, goodness knows when I'll have time to read all these. The trouble is I'm now following lots of bookish blogs, I spot a book that looks interesting, hop over to the library site to see if they have it then instead of making a note somewhere for the future I press the Reservation button and end up with a lot to read.

'Lake Wobegon Day's is one that was mentioned somewhere, no idea what it is. Angela Thirkell - 'The Headmistress' is another Vintage Modern Classic reprinted in November. 'Christmas Around the Village Green' by Dot May Dunn is a memoir. 'A poem for every night of the Year' is a children's poetry book I wanted to look through. 'Island on the Edge' by Anne Cholawo - about life on Soay. 'High Mortality of Doves' is a new crime novel by Kate Ellis.  'The English Year' another book just to look through and the small book in the middle is an old Local Interest book titled '........and over here' memories about the USAF airmen when they were here in 1944.
And Whoop! Whoop! On Friday I  found another Persephone for £1.50 in the Samaritans charity shop in town. 

 Persephone 50 - Hilda Bernstein - The World that was Ours. Not a nice grey one, but one of their cheaper Classics but as my mum used to say "beggars can't be choosers". At the same time I also picked up this little gem for 50p.

It was published in 1949 and has several black and white photo plates. What I like are lots of quotes from writings of each period. This may well have been a school reference book as Batsford did lots in this style right through to the 1970s.


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Sue

Whoops or.............

......................how to embarrass new neighbours without even trying!

The lady who is selling us her house invited us over for tea and cakes and invited some of the close neighbours round so we could meet them. Very nice too.

Conversation goes like this
One couple were telling us how long they had lived in their house, saying they had moved here from Essex and had found everyone very friendly.
Another couple had moved there from London and said how lucky they had been to find nice neighbours as they had friends who had moved into another Suffolk village and hadn't been made welcome at all.
First lady pipes up with "of course Suffolk people always say you have to have lived somewhere for 25 years before you can call yourself a local"
Second lady says " I think it might be even longer than that, some locals can be very ....you know... unfriendly"

Conversation turns to where we have lived before as we'd already said we were in Ipswich but hadn't been there long. So we explained that we'd had a smallholding over near the coast for the last 23 years and before that we had lived in the villages of Bacton and Cotton just a few miles away across the other side of the A140.

"Oh you are local people then?"
Yes - I was born in Stowmarket and Colin in Bacton. Suffolk through and through!

Subject changed quickly!

There is a moral here I think!

Many Thanks for hat comments - I'm still not sure. There were just 4 of us wearing hats or fascinators at son's wedding so it's definitely going out of fashion now.
Apologies for not replying individually to comments, trying to write a post everyday and reading everyones December posts seems to be taking up all my time!

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Sue

That hat (definitely not an advent photo!)

Some more wedding photos have popped up on various Facebook pages including me and That Hat

I can't wear a fascinator - hair to short! So it has to be a hat. The hat came off eBay (£5) it was navy and cream- the colours I wanted and looked OK but had a HUGE papery flowery thing on the side which was silly. I took that off, then the hat was too boring, so I fished about in my ribbons and bow box and stuck this bow thing on. I thought it looked much too daft to wear but went with it. Everyone assured me it looked very suitable for a wedding but I think they were just being kind!

Jacob demolishing Col's buttonhole rose

And our son looking super-douper slim - he lost 2 stone for the wedding!

I think that's all for wedding photos.


I'm running out of ideas for Advent photos and there are still 8 days to go so I may be back tomorrow or not.
Sue

Christmas dinner for £10...........unless................

.........................you are 'sniffy' about frozen food.

I had never in my life bought frozen roast potatoes until this year. After all, why would I, we were self-sufficient in vegetables and most years Christmas dinner was completely home produced.
 Then came town life  and when I was home alone for 7 weeks and fancied roast potatoes, I didn't have any spuds in the house and anyway it seemed silly to par-boil and roast 2 potatoes. So I splashed out 79p on a bag of roasties from Aldi. And found they were perfectly fine and only 30 minutes in the oven. Then I tried parsnips and they were OK too.
So when I saw this Special Buy advertised at the local Co-op I had no hesitation in buying.

Turkey breast joint, roast potatoes and parsnips. Yorkshire puds and Brussels sprouts (Hmmm not sure about these) and a gi-normous Viennetta. £10 the lot. They have topped up the freezer and will be very handy after Christmas.
I bet a lot of people will throw up their hands in horror at a whole meal from the freezer, but surely this could be one way to save a heck-of-a-lot of money and still be traditional.
 

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Sue

The Mystery of The Christmas Tea Towel

I opened the box of Christmas decorations
and what did I find on the top

This

Where did it come from?
Someone must have given it to me for Christmas last year...........
But who?
And why was it in with the Christmas decorations rather than with the tea-towels? *
I have no idea, I hope I said thank you to whoever gave it to me - how embarrassing .

Back Sooner or Later
Sue

PS Thank you for all the comments, we are still talking about the wedding and different photos keep popping up on Facebook. I'll probably share more - 'til everyone is fed up with them!

*Actually I think I know why it was in with the decorations........it was probably because so many other things had already been packed in boxes for the move.

Apart from a wedding................

..............other things have been happening here....................................

On Saturday we went to feed Son and Daughter-in-law's cat as they were busy with clearing up after the wedding, we happened to go via Needham Market car boot sale where I found this little book for 50p

 Then on Sunday Col had to return his waistcoat and cravat to the Posh Clothes Shop and we happened to go via the Portman Road car boot sale (and had we needed Christmas decorations we could have found enough to have trimmed a whole street of houses!)
Instead I picked up another book for 50p - you just never know what you'll find and a Tasha Tudor book from the USA was very unexpected.

Very odd how we 'chanced' upon boot sales both days wasn't it?

Later Sunday M and R called in on their way home from all the clearing up to deliver some of the flowers from the tables and a piece of left over Wedding cake. Oh it is good.

Monday we went to Asda to print out a few wedding photos so Col's dad had something to keep quite quickly (he is not well enough to  cope with a  wedding) We also delivered a piece of cake to him and took the lap top so he could see the rest of our pictures.

Last week we sold Col's bike on eBay so that's added a bit more to funds and we've found a photo printing website where we can pay by Pay Pal - so the bike sale will pay for some wedding photos.The machine at Asda turned out decent prints but they were a bit pricey.

A few books have been read although not as many as usual
Angela Thirkell - Marling Hall is one of the latest batch of her books to be re-printed by Virago Modern Classics. It's a good chunky read set in her fictional Barsetshire during the war years.
A.A.Milne -The Red House Mystery. Who knew that way back in 1922 the Winnie The Pooh author had written one crime novel? I certainly didn't until someone mentioned it on one of the book blogs I read. The library had a copy, I've forgotten the story already!
Bernard Knight - The Lately Deceased. Another crime fiction re-printed from 1963.
Melissa Harrison- Winter - which I've already mentioned last week.

According to my Books Read 2016 page I've read 111 books this year but so few of them have been Non Fiction and so many have been crime fiction. I perhaps need to even things up a bit more next year although it all depends on what turns up from the library or what I fancy reading of my own.
 
 Thank you for all the comments over the last few days.
Yes the wedding was at Knodishall church, I wrote about it HERE. It was an exceptionally mild day for December which was OK until we got to the Westleton Crown for the reception, where of course all the wood fires were lit and they were not able to have roof lights in the big restaurant open due to noise restrictions so as not to upset neighbouring houses in the village. Phew..... it was warm!

Back to Photos In Advent tomorrow
Sue

Winter Wedding

On December 9th 2016 MC married RJ and she became another Mrs C just like me! So happy to have another Mrs C in the family, wish Col's mum was still alive she would have been so happy too.

Weddings may be much more complicated to organise than "back in our day" but they are much more fun!
Here are some pictures from the winter wedding (although the weather was unseasonably warm)

Caught this photo of Col and our son, just before we went into church. The Best man W - who has been son's best friend since they were 9 -  is behind and between M and Col and over on the left is Col's brother A - if he had noticed he was being photographed he would probably have taken a step backwards out of shot!

The wedding had a Christmas theme and we sang Ding Dong Merrily on High for the final hymn

Bride and Groom

Our Eldest, her husband and  Jacob

Our wonderful family ( minus Florence who had finally fallen asleep after being so grumpy all through the service  that B had to take her out into the vestry)

A choir entertained everyone with Christmas carols on arrival at the reception venue while M & R went off to Leiston Abbey Ruins for special photos

Extremely yummy Wedding cake which became the desert for the meal, thereby saving M & R the cost of an extra course!

The Proudest Grandad in the world with Jacob and Florence

The two little cousins get to know each other!

Son photobombing photo of his niece and nephew

Jacob enjoying his meal!

 

The newly weds first dance, wonder if anyone anywhere has danced their first dance to "All I want for Christmas is  you"!

A Good Time was had by all.

Thank you for comments over the last few days, I must get round to replying properly.

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Sue