Afternoon tea on New Year’s eve

We had afternoon tea this New Year’s eve at Courtyard Tea Rooms in Alresford, Hampshire.  The Courtyard is a stylish shabby chic tea room serving delicious cakes and afternoon teas. 

Displayed on each of the window sills where lovely tea-themed books like this one.

Driving home

An early start to our drive home this morning.

Whole cloves

Up at the crack of dawn to do our Christmas food shopping. I had prepared my shopping list the night before to ensure that we didn’t forget anything. I even checked it twice.

But for some reason I thought we already whole cloves for the Bread Sauce. So after a second trip to the supermarket and  a little bit of searching I finally found this forgotten ingredient.

Made in the North Pole

Christmas decorations are just little memories of the past.  This one came from my first year at college.

Christmas candles

Last night I spent a relaxing two and half hours with a lovely friend making these gorgeous Christmas candles. 

I had no experience of candle making before and found it a fascinating process, especially how you add the dried oranges and star anise to the candles.

Each of the candles is fragranced with Christmas Spice to add a little more festive aroma when burnt.

I am really pleased with my first attempts at candle making, and I can see how addictive it could be as hobby.

Christmas baking

Tis the season for Christmas baking, though not actually by me as I don’t seem to have spare time at the moment.

But I certainly seem to find the time to eat the results from the baking sessions at home.

These very yummy Christmas Cupcakes  recipe came from Next 100 Irresistible Cupcakes.  The cupcakes have the addition ingredient of ground almonds to give them their festive taste.

These shortbread biscuits are made by adding cinnamon to a basic shortbread recipe, cutting them into seasonal shapes (such as bells, stars) and decorating with traditional red and green colours.

Pink kisses

Another very frosty and chilly morning today. Layer on layer of frost and ice.  Yet the sky was crisscrossed with pink kisses.

Floating candles

Floating candles made a beautiful table decoration for tonight’s birthday meal.

 

A snowy start

What a surprise this morning, opening the front door to a dusting of snow.   Winter has final arrived.

I must admit this was the first morning I have felt pleased not to have my car.  I hate driving in snow, even driving in a couple of centimetres can be a little sketchy. The traffic and travel problems this light dusting of snow caused unbelievably lasted most of the day.

Frost-bite

Another chilly and frosty start to the day with bright sunny skies. The ground in places was still frozen hard, despite the beautiful sunshine.