Christmas Eve visits

Made the Chocolate Saltine Toffee last night, haven't tried it yet. Made some more Honey Lavender Shortbread. Dipped the Cranberry White Chocolate Biscotti in the extra white chocolate (which does not melt very well.)

I am so glad I wasn't baking today! So hot, so humid! We went over to see Roz and her husband, taking gifts and baked goods. I tried a homemade (fruit) mince pie, fresh out of the oven and for the first time understood why people like the things. Mmm.

Still don't want to eat the shopbought ones.

Came home for a bit, then headed over to Dee's for our usual Christmas Eve supper. Slight irritation of Dee getting a Christmas call while we were there and us basically ending up 'on hold' for about half an hour. The boredom was somewhat alleviated by Dee telling her friend at one point, 'You will always be the little girl on the potty to me.' Good thing Mum had finished her drink by then. (Dee also spoke to her friend's rather deaf father who was about to spend his first Christmas as a widower. He and his wife had married at nineteen and they were together for sixty-five years. Dee and her husband were married for almost as long. She told him that if he must go to the cemetery tomorrow, he wasn't to let it make him miserable because his wife wasn't there. She was probably standing right behind him, ready to thump him one if he dragged everyone down on Christmas Day. So very Dee.)

Anyway, we had dinner and presents (we now have some beautiful pale green ceramic ramekins and matching square casserole dish with a glass lid) and talk. Dee was greatly admiring my dress, which I'd worn thinking she'd like it. I wore the same outfit when the girls came over for afternoon tea and it had made me laugh to look at myself that day.

I was standing in front of the mirror doing my makeup, wearing a long white dress, protected by a pretty floral apron, hair bound up in a beaded comb, pearls in my ears and around my neck - this somehow seemed ridiculous. Rena described my outfit that day as 'very Bohemian meets Country and Garden.' She thought that was probably a good description of my style in general. Can't say that's how I've ever thought of it but okay!

Dee was just so delighted by this pretty white dress with its flowing skirt, like the ones they wore to dances when she was a girl, and by the fact that I dress up. That I like to dress nicely. And when we left she yelled after us, 'Get your mother to take a picture of you in that dress! I don't like the photo we have of you now.' So we had a photo session when we came home.

Now I just need to bake the cake for tomorrow, fill Mum's stocking, clear the dining table and go to bed. Merry Christmas!

Have some kittens and a Christmas tree!