Christmas Cake and Candy Skies

Christmas is rather creeping up on me - can't believe it'll be December in a couple of days. Bit late but finally got the Christmas cake in the Rayburn, after soaking the fruit for the last few days. Haven't made one for a couple of years, but having heard a Rayburn cooks a good cake thought I'd give it a try.



Tweaked the recipe a bit since I'm not keen on candied peel and currants - substituted these for glace cherries and dried cranberries - and added a few crushed pecan nuts as well. So we'll see how it turns out . . . it smells pretty good anyway (maybe that's the brandy and cherry liqueur!). Cooked beautifully, went in at 7.30am, came out about 1pm.

And to finish my second blog of the day (that isn't entirely weather related!) here's a picture of today's candy pink sunset:

Frosty Frosty Day . . .

It's been a cold and crisp one - time to add a frost to my weather symbols I think - although it all looked very pretty.

Unfortunately cold meant condensation, with water running off some of our windows, notably the ones in the lounge which aren't double glazed. Until we can afford some new windows we've gone with double-glazing film - plastic sheeting stretched across the window and taped in place, and then heated with a hair dryer to taughten it.

It's a bit fiddly but seems to work really well - if you look carefully you can see the water running down the window pane on the left, while the film has insulated the one on the right. At £6.99 for four windows it's a darn site cheaper than double-glazing, although it only lasts one winter obviously.

Doesn't look as odd as you'd think either!

More Welsh Weather

Must think of something else to blog about!

Welsh Weather

Back to the weather in Wales . . .

It was a bit of a mixed bag last week, with a weekend less of rain, than of cloud (except we were sitting inside it!). Another damp one.

Swans and Shakespeare

Well as you may have gathered there's some belated blogging going on here. There'll be no weather for last week as we weren't actually in Wales, but travelling round the country.

We saw Swans in Welney . . .

and Ducks in Ely . . .

and strange signs in Stratford-upon-Avon . . .

Waiting is apparently prohibited on 'Even Dates' - but why hanging around on a corner of the pavement in Stratford should be such a heinous crime is anyone's guess! We were careful to move on quickly - didn't want to get locked up on the night we had tickets for Hamlet.

Here the question was 'To Wear a Beanie Hat . . .

Or Not To Wear A Beanie Hat?'

Not sure it's quite what the Bard himself would have expected, but very good - David Tennant made an excellent Hamlet!

Nice Weather for Mushrooms!

Well the end of October proved just as damp - although November brought something of an upturn . . .

The mushrooms on our drive seem to like it anyway . . .