Final Christmas Memories

Today we bid a fond farewell to Christmas for another year. The tree and decorations have come down and now it feels like there is a big empty space in the living room. To fill the void, I thought I’d post a few final Christmas memories.

On Christmas morning we snoozed until the cats persuaded us that it was time to get up feed them.

In our white fluffy bathrobes, we took it in turns to select a present from under the tree, as we sang along to all the Christmas classics (Stay Another Day by East17 is a personal favourite whilst Mr F is more of a Bing Crosby White Christmas fan… but we both agree on Fairytale of New York!).

We used to wrap a present for the cats, but found that they most enjoy sniffing at all the discarded wrapping paper, string or ribbon.

 Mr Darcy is particularly fond of the feather decorations and I have caught
him perched on the end of the sofa, feather in mouth, guilty look on
face on more than one occasion this Christmas!

On this basis, we think he liked his present! (Check out those whiskers!).

We also bought them a new cat tunnel. Mr Darcy waited patiently whilst it was put together, then sniffed it and sauntered off. Maybe it’ll grow on him!

After opening our presents, we cooked dinner. I won a hamper a few months back (see my post on this here ) so we decided to live dangerously and cook our first ever roast duck on Christmas Day (we had a back up little joint of turkey in the freezer just in case it all went horribly wrong!). It was really simple to prepare, you just pat it down to remove the excess moisture, then rub in some sea salt and pepper. I cut some sprigs of rosemary from the garden and put these in the cavity, which gave off a gorgeous aroma as it was cooking!

All went to plan and lunch was delicious. We served up roasted potatoes and parsnips, savoy cabbage, yorkshire puds, honey glazed carrots and lashings of gravy. I didn’t take many photos like I normally would, because it was Christmas Day after all. Here’s the one snap I did take before tucking in.

 After lunch we settled down to watch movies and began our attempt to conquer mount chocolate. It’s hard work but someone has to do it!

Boxing Day was an equally lazy, indulgent affair… until the drama happened!

I planned to shred the remaining duck, reheat it and make duck wraps for us to snack on for our tea. Neither of our cats are allowed on the kitchen countertops, but the smell of the duck must have been too good to resist, because as I turned my back Sookie leapt up, straight onto the burning hot electric stove. I heard a horrible hissing noise, smelt burning and screamed. She ran off up the stairs and I spent the next hour trying to coax her from under the bed so that I could see how bad the burn was. I was sick with worry. As it turns out though, I could not find a mark on her. I think she only ran off because I screamed so loud! All we can think of is that her furry paws protected her and that is what singed a bit. Sookie now has 8 lives I think.

So that was our Christmas. Since then it has been a whirlwind of family visits. My sister, brother in law and nephews have been visiting from Liverpool for the last 3 days so it’s been great to catch up and see how much bigger the boys are getting.

Tomorrow we are venturing out to do a bit of post christmas shopping, then we have an afternoon/evening of alcohol planned… I’ll have to let you know whether we make it to midnight or not!

In the meantime wishing you all a very happy new year!

Love from Laura xoxo