02
Jan 17

Yuletide & 2017!

We had a great Yuletide season this year. Kicked off by purchasing our biggest tree yet and decorating it beautifully with lights and ornaments at the beginning of December already, and followed by visiting friends and markets in Freiburg, we were ready for the main events. This year I made fewer kinds of cookies, but no less delicious, and complemented by awesome German lebkuchen, we were not left wanting for sweets.

Tree

Solstice/my b-day celebrations started with a lavish breakfast of blueberry pancakes and a huge pile of presents (I wouldn’t want it any other way!). I got some beautiful stuff, including books and a Welsh print for the wall, and to top it all off a trip to Amsterdam in the spring! It’s gonna be awesome and I can’t wait. Since I already took the day off at work, I just lounged for the day, reading my books and enjoying myself. In the evening I went around town a bit to look at the lights and decorations set up everywhere for my benefit and celebration, and finally met Iest for dinner at Busaba Eathai.

The main celebration on the 25th was lovely as well, with lavish pressies (especially for me again), and fancy three-course meal including baked camembert with honey, figs and nuts as a starter, parmesan breaded garlic mushroom pizzas (made from scratch including Iest’s signature dough), and dark chocolate chilli mousse (made by me). I got (among many others) a membership of the UK National Trust for 2017, so that’s our weekend trips sorted – 581 places to choose from! We were extremely full and didn’t want to spoil the rest of the day anyway, so we left the packing for the next day morning and just enjoyed our day lounging and playing with pressies. Also played a full game of dice, in which I ruled like the dice queen I am.

Dinner

On the 26th we packed everything (like, literally – I can’t believe we ever made it to Wales by train), and loaded our trusty Terrell, and drove up to the beautiful Snowdonia. Where we got even more presents, including a boat trip over to the Skerries sometime next year!

Tuesday 27 December
Weather reasonable (there is no snow though this year), so we went up Moel Siabod for a stroll. It’s like a little hillock up from Capel Curig, no biggie. It was quite foggy and windy up top, and the streams were nicely frozen over. We countered it with nice tea from our thermos and a serving of yule cookies. Overall, we defo consumed more energy than we gave up on the walk, but after the week of only eating, the fresh air and some movement did us real good.

Moel Siabod

Wednesday 28 December
Amazing sunny day, no other possibility than lugging our holiday weight up a nice range – we selected the Carneddau for the honour. Starting up from LLyn Ogwen, we took the National Trust route straight up (I allowed Iest on it, even though he’s not a member), and basking in the winter sun we made it to the first peak. From there on it was a nice ridge walk, sprinkled with tea and yule cookies. It was still quite windy up top, and water was frozen solid, but the sun was unwavering until the evening. We went down through an uncharted territory to make sure we’d get to the car before dark, which these days comes way too early. Lovely walk!

Carneddau

Carneddau

Pen yr Ole Wen

Crisp evening

Carneddau

Thursday 29 December
Weather so so, and clouds lying low on the mountains. Perfect day for another National Trust treasure visit – this time the whistling sands beach of Porthor on the LLŷn peninsula. A beautiful place, not so much whistly this time around, but still a pretty piece of coast. Had a cuppa in the small café, and swung also by another great NT place – Porth y Swnt in Aberdaron – on the way. This is a nice exhibition about the culture and environment of the peninsula, and includes a puffin hole!

Pan chwery chwa oddi uchod â’r môr
Mae hen angenfilod
Y dwfn I’w wyneb yn dod
I’w haileni’n wylanod

Evening watch of long-anticipated Charlie Brooker 2016 Wipe – what a year this was! He still covered it in only an hour, and did well as always.

Whistling sands

Friday 30 December
And since we were so into NT places now, we decided to visit the great Plas Newydd and gardens on the Menai straits. This elegant house was redesigned by James Wyatt in the 18th century, and has lots to see both inside and out. Because of the season not all of the interiors were accessible (so we’ll have to visit again), but the ones that were were nicely decorated with trees and presents and fireplaces and board games and seasonal music, so it was all very nice. The gardens likewise, plus beautiful views across the straits. Good choice. To top the day up, we went by Rhosneigr for a little stroll, and finally had a nice dinner with friends at Dylan’s in Criccieth.

Plas Newydd

Plas Newydd

Saturday 31 December
Last day of the year! Which actually does not mean much to us – we do not partake in forced celebrations and parties on the night. But we thought we could go camping in the wild again, like we have done several times before. Alas, the forecast was for heavy rains to come for the night, so there was really no point (the point is to wake up in raging sunshine in the new year, perhaps even dip into the sea on the occasion). During the day we decided to make one more small walk in the hills, and selected my fave Yr Aran for the occasion. The peak was submerged in cloud, but overall it was a very fine final walk for the year.
We made a nice batch of chickpea curry for the evening, and went to bed way before midnight.

Yr Aran

We did however, drag Gina out of the warmth and down to Dinas Dinlle, where we made our text-book year number (2017!) in lights, together with some heart light-graffiti in the cold, wet rain.

2017 Lights!

Heart Lights!

Sunday 1 January
Packed everything, it does not seem we have less stuff even though we offloaded all the kids’ pressies that were taking up the trunk, weird. Made our way down to our London home via Snowdonia, which had now been blessed with a sprinkling of snow on its highest peaks (just as it was pissing down through the night in the valleys), so we could make an impromptu photoshoot of Iestyn’s beard and slippers in the wild.
At home sweet home we watched new Sherlock (kinda so so, better than the last one, but long lost are the splendours of season 1&2), with some pizza and wine (for Gina) before going to bed.

Monday 2 January
Thank gods for this day off, so we could do all the laundry, clean up, and purge our little flat of any sign of the preceding festivities – took down the tree and all decorations, and that was that. Back to normal and to 2017!


26
Dec 14

Our London Christmas

Christmas started early for us this year. Gina came up with an epic timetable (it was called Action Plan – Gina), and different tasks for us to complete. My first task of the festive holiday, was to locate us a real, nice Xmas tree – and by the last weekend of November, I’d located one – fairly close by in Brick Lane, with a nice wee company called ‘Pines and Needles’. We were both super pleased with our wee 3 foot Nordman Fir Tree!

Our real hard work came on the first weekend of December. Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without Gina’s famous Czech Christmas Cookies – so, this weekend marked the first weekend of many, where Gina pulled up her sleeves and worked hard making the different doughs for us to bake. We now have many, great different cookie shapes (including a Welsh dragon-shaped one, which I got at work from my Secret Santa – he really IS watching!), so we got extremely busy.

Man shaped cookie

Man shaped cookie

Christmas tree cookies

Christmas tree cookies

Gina in the Cookie Factory

Gina in the Cookie Factory

Chocolate dipped cookies

Chocolate dipped cookies

Jam filled cookies

Jam filled cookies

Iest learning 'piping'

Iest learning ‘piping’

Cookie factory

Cookie factory

One of Gina’s project for the festive season, as my beard is pretty epic if I don’t say so myself (yes he does, all the time!) – was to create a ‘Christmas Beard’ – so one evening Gina went wild, and decorated my beard nicely. (Was not really a project, just a spur of the moment inspiration; wasn’t even on the Action Plan!)

Christmas Beard

Christmas Beard

Gina’s beautiful birthday also falls in the Christmas Season (there’s so much wrong with this statement! If anything, it’s the christmas which falls in my birthday time; but in reality, it’s actually both my birthday and the christmas that fall in the Winter Solstice days, the real reason for the season!) so we celebrated nicely. I made her some blueberry pancakes for breakfast – and we headed out for the day to town. (Yeah, like that breakfast was epic – the blueberry pancakes were delish, the tiny candles so cute, the rose petals so romantic, and The Economist: World in 2015 so me!)

Birthday breakfast!

Birthday breakfast!

And, what was left was the actual Christmas Day! Every year, it’s a tough one for Gina, as she usually has her Christmas presents on the 24th evening (by Baby Jesus), but here in the UK, we get them on the 25th in the morning (by a guy from a CocaCola commercial). So she did extremely well not to open any – although, she had a great time eyeing the presents that were nicely placed under the tree.

Our Nordman Fir Xmas tree

Our Nordman Fir Xmas tree

Christmas Morning!

Christmas Morning!

Christmas Morning! Ho Ho Ho!

Christmas Morning! Ho Ho Ho!

After opening our beautiful, beautiful gifts, I went to the kitchen, and started to work on our Christmas dinner – which took around 4 – 5 hours of cooking. This year we went for Veg Christmas Pies, with a plethora of seasoned baked veg, and for desert, a Cranberry meringue roulade – which was oh-so-good (I helped on that one). Very nice.

Christmas Table

Christmas Table

Christmas Food!

Christmas Food!