Christmas and Birthday Cake

David is one of the unlucky folk who have a birthday at Christmas.  Every year since we have been married I have ensured he has had a birthday cake.  This year however we will be going away in January and not wanting to leave our housesitter with two leftover cakes I thought we would have a combined Christmas and Birthday cake.  My good friend Ellie who has offered to make the cake was slightly horrified but followed my instructions to the letter and this is the result. 

Snow

Couldn;t resist putting a picture of our snow on my blog as everyone else seems to have snow pictures.  If you look really closely you will see it!

Cooking on hold!

Cooking will be on hold for a few days as I am deeply immersed in decorating.  This was not planned!  Last weekend our waterbed developed a leak which shouldn't have been a problem but after a failed repair we decided a new mattress was called for.  We drained the mattress (or so we thought) and tied it in a bundle and tried to carry it downstairs - I had a good idea to slide it down the stairs as it was a bit heavy - wrong.  There was still water in it and guess what as we pushed it down the stairs the water started to leak out.  Fortunately we managed to catch it before we lost too much.  The photo is of David draining the rest of the water just outside the front door. 

Having taken the mattress out of the bed it is easy to move so we decided to decorate before getting a new mattress.  Spent most of Sunday moving drawers etc and getting ready to paint.  "I'll give you a hand next weekend" says David.  Wrong again - he's on a safety boat course all weekend so no guesses for who is doing the decorating.