Christmas come and gone

So, it’s been and gone for another year.  Yesterday I sat and did nothing and it was so nice after the rush of last week.  Here’s the short guide to our Christmas:

We had people round on Sunday for which I made mulled wine (and drank a large quantity myself in the name of quality control.  I also made a large quantity of mince pies, using a little pastry trick that a friend gave me that worked very well (lovely soft dought to roll out and nice crumbly pastry to eat).

We tried a new trick with the gingerbread house too - decorating the pieces BEFORE constucting the house.  It definitely works better as the sweets can’t slide off while the pieces of gingerbread are lying flat but it did feel a bit like cheating!  The finished house lasted until Sunday when various unnamed people started picking off the sweeties!  The cake, on the other hand, has survived in tact as everybody was too full to eat it on Tuesday (and – more importantly – the boys don’t like it).

Cem trying out the 3-d glasses

Fethiye is a pretty awful place for buying presents.  At this age the boys are too old for most toys and they have phones, laptops, i-pods etc. so there isn’t much left except clothes.  I did do quite a bit of shopping online though.  I thought that was supposed to be easy and stress-free?  Many foreign sites won’t post to Turkey so I used Turkish sites;  unfortunately some of them would not accept my UK debit card.  It took me about 3 days and a phone call to one of the companies to place the orders – and I had to pay the cargo company cash on delivery.  So not all that easy and stress-free really!

kitten - just 'cos she's so cute!

On Christmas morning we were pretty lazy – the boys don’t come in at half six any more!  After breakfast Cem and Emre had to go and do a couple of things and I had a chance to get things sorted for the dinner later.  We had that at the hotel with friends and Cem’s mum – only about 12 of us this year.  The turkey apparently tasted good, though it wouldn’t have won any prizes for presentation.  I used a roasting bag for the first time and when I undid it after just 3 hours, everything fell off the turkey!

I had made myself a chestnut casserole and actually remembered to take it to the hotel this year.  Last year I forgot it at home and asked Kaan to collect it.  In the final panic of cooking, stirring and reheating I opened the pot he’d brought me to find it contained stewed apple so I ended up having only veggies!

Turkey has been talking Christmas things this year.  Firstly, a Turkish archeologist has asked Italy to return Saint Nick’s bones (taken from here several centuries ago).  And Turkish scientists have been researching why Rudolf’s nose was red…yes really, and gained quite a lot of attention from all over the world!

And finally…..play the video – isn’t it great?  HappyChristmas and hope you all have a good New Year celebration!