Once in a Lifetime...

We are really in the Christmas spirit here in the Pink House, and experiencing a lot of firsts...

First yule log I've ever made. Thanks Nigella. I still love you. It was so good.

The first pony ride either girl has ever had. They were SO patient waiting their turn. Yes, they are bare legs! Prinkles!

Me and my book baby. And my real life babies. In the biggest bookstore in Cork City. Withmy book on display. Signed by the author! The Rainbow Way is still pre-order only on Amazon, and has been their Hot New Release all week in the motherhood genre on Amazon.co.uk, where it reached #17. It was outselling The Artist's Way 5 to 1 on Kindle this morning on Amazon.com, And has been in the top 40 in Crafts too! I am simply blown away! I have heard that Leonie is going to feature it as one of her top books of 2013. And the publishers have had enquiries about foreign rights! 

I was also sought out by a regional paper for an interview. There will be a feature on  me in the Evening Echo next week.

As we were leaving the shop we saw my dad's book in the FRONT WINDOW of Waterstones!

Then off to the Ferris Wheel. Another first for our kids. I've not been on one for many years. It was superb fun.


A once in a life time experience, he said...

The city lights were coming on below us...

The girls loved it too!

Then off to the Winter Wonderland in the park next door, done by the truly wonderful Doutcha theatre/ puppet company. Fairy doors in the walls, the trees lit up, live elves and fairies hiding behind trees. 

Truly magical.

 This is the stuff that dreams are made of!

Merry Christmas...  we're celebrating already!

Those infamous words: let's make a gingerbread house

We are totally addicted to Masterchef in this house - a TV cooking show where the contestants are pushed to the limits of endurance, before having their dishes picked apart by the odd couple of Michel Roux Jr, and Fat-Boy-who-the-fuck-is-he-anyway-Greg-Wallace.

But I always say, that to really test them they should chuck in one kid having a tantrum, another trying to "help'", a pig sty kitchen, a third child destroying everything they do and then see how much they can cook!

So today I took that challenge upon myself. Yup. Nutter!

In reality when you utter those infamous words "let's build a gingerbread house" you start out with fantasies of creating something like this...

From christmaswarmth.tumblr.com on my Pinterest board Creating Christmas

If I were a cruel "perfect life" blogger I'd show you a cutesy finished picture, which you would promptly pin on Pinterest and go away hating me. But I'm not, so instead I shall regale you with the reality behind a "happy family time" making a real gingerbread house, in order to reassure you of my enduring lunacy, and why NOT making Christmas memories together is the sane loving thing to do!!

It all started with a 4 year old who came home from school and tantrumed long and hard. Hot on the heels of a 2 year old tantrum. The 4 year old ordered a chocolate bar, the fire put out, hit her sister, the sitting room to herself to watch TV, her shoes put back on (after having kicked over her sister's bowl of mushroom soup). He brother went and started banging his head on the door in anger and frustration, having spent the past hour lighting the fire. And also because it meant we couldn't make candles over the fire like I'd promised.

So I uttered those infamous words: let's make a gingerbread house. We've made one every year four the past four years. They are always a festive and semi fun way to destroy the house and achieve multiple arguments.

So we started. Me and the boy. It wasn't long before middle child smelt fun she was missing out on and abandoned CBeebies. Cue fight over whether or not she deserved to join in and forced apologies for having been a little so-and-so.

Carols on. CD 3 is lame ass. Change to CD 1. Much better.

Rolling out one part gingerbread with one part glitter from earlier "Christmas card making session". Can't find the rolling pin, so we use the cling film roll!

Guesstimate the house parts. Bake. Make caramel. Don't burn it. Assemble house - snapping off the bits that don't fit. It doesn't collapse like usual. Very chuffed. Haven't even burnt myself!!!

I start to get cocky and make a sugar work cage of spun sugar. Michel Roux Jr would be proud. Burn my finger on the last drop of caramel. Fuck it.

Girls come racing past for the second time. It is then that I realise that the youngest is chucking Hobnob biscuits out of the packet at her older sister whilst chasing her round the house. Her older sister was retaliating with a pot of blue glitter. I kid you not. And the cleaner was here only 24 hours ago.

Mama roars.

Boy makes icing. Littlest girl adds way to much water. We do a fine job of decorating it together. No one dies. Look at our handy work!

And look at the fucking mess!

Now I have to cook dinner!

For inspiration on Christmas crafting with friends and family, see my popular post from last year: Craft-Tea Christmas celebrations.

Operation Christmas Spirit

Operation Christmas spirit: this is my last ditch attempt to feel festive, after feeling decidedly meh! after the pottery Christmas party yesterday.

So up with kiddies at 8.30, despite a lousy night, despite it being my writing day. And straight into the kitchen. I unleashed my inner domestic goddess, who has been away these past weeks, perhaps even months, whilst creative rainbow mama has been here writing books. And so in two hours we made:

• clementine jelly
• cranberry sauce
• cranberry, pecan, dark choc and orange cookies
• gingerbread cookies
• mulled apple juice

The house smelt of Christmas. And then breakfast of cookies and mulled juice tasted like Christmas. So I think we can say mission accomplished! Might even head off to see the big red man at the local safari park this afternoon!

After sharing last year's Santa post on my Facebook page (if you're not a friend, make that your Xmas pressie to me...) a good friend emailed me this...

REMEMBER THIS AT CHRISTMAS TIME

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December.

Female reindeer retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring. Therefore, according to EVERY historical rendition depicting Santa's reindeer, EVERY single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen, had to be a girl.

We should've known... ONLY women would be able to drag a fat man in a red velvet suit allaround the world in one night and not get lost.  A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!   

Oh it made me chuckle - thank you Leigh . As did the comment that another reader left at the bottom of my Santa post about collecting kangaroo poo from the Australian bush to act as reindeer poo! Hahaha!

So all it leaves me to say is have a very Merry Christmas, dearest readers. We are set to hit 50,000 page views before Christmas day which is very exciting. Thank you for coming back again and again and sharing the journey. It is all the more rich with you here.

I would love a festive hello from all my readers below. If you've never said hi, take a deep breath and de-lurk yourself (thank you SO much Lucy for your lovely de-lurking email this morning- it made me smile!).

Tell me what you REALLY want this Christmas.

Me? I REALLY want to hold my own book in my hands, and have a "placing it on my own bookshelf ceremony" - which is why I have been working SO hard on it!

That and a night's sleep. But I've been asking for that for 7 years!

Merry Christmas one and all, and to all a good night ('s sleep!)

Festivals of light

We are in the middle of a six week period where cultures around the world celebrate light - candles and twinkling fairy lights for Hannuka, Eid, Christmas and Advent, Diwali and Winter Solstice. There seems to be strong human urge to gather together, to feast, and to lift our spirits with sparkling lights.

Today is St Lucia's day. A festival of light. And my patron saint. Our name, from the Italian, luce and Latin lux means light. I loved this post from Twig and Toadstool last year about it, it's the first time I had heard of the celebration. Needless to say in an ideal world we would be making costumes and the like - but this, dear readers, is the year of enough- and that means enough guilt for all that we are not doing this season!

Driving home after yesterday's rant, we drove down the main street - and marvelled at the street lights, drove home past houses lit up inside and out. And my spirits lifted. This, this is what I love about this time of year, more than anything else. It used to be the music too, but with my failing Christian belief (more of which another time) and the fact that Christmas adverts start on the 1st November, I find them less rousing than once upon a time. Except The Snowman, I LOVE The Snowman - am linking to it here to get you feeling all tingly and magical.

But the light, the even the garish lights on the over decorated houses - you know the sort with a hundred inflatable flashing reindeer on the roof - they spark my soul with beauty and hope. And I realise that that is what we're missing here in the Pink House. Because of being energy conscious we don't "do" many lights - we have some on the stairs, our solar powered tree ones don't work - of course. I love lighting the (wilting) advent wreath with the children. I want to do more of that. And they love it too. They adore lighting candles.

And so, I think, this year I will pass on the carol service and the huge amounts of festive cooking. Gingerbread houses and dressed up santas in shopping malls be damned. I will celebrate a festival of light, a simple, gentle season of light and magic in the dark and cold. That will be my focus this festive season, in this year of Enough - to celebrate the light - to absorb the magic of the twinkling lights, and add a few of my own.

"And a Merry bloomin' Christmas to you too!"

So says Raymond Brigg's Father Christmas. I, as I may have already mentioned LOVE Christmas, no humbugs here! And the hero of the day (minus, OF COURSE, the dear baby Jesus) is the man in red... or so I always thought. How wrong I was. I have read a number of natural parenting bloggers bemoaning Satan, (sorry, slip of the keyboard!), Santa, of late. Bla, bla indoctrination with commercialism, lying to children, yada yada.

Stop the lights people! I have yet to meet a child traumatised by finding out Santa doesn't exist. Santa is about fun, magic, mystery... no? I'm not saying you have to pay over-inflated prices to go and sit on some dodgy old man's knee in a shopping centre and receive some trashy toy. I'm not saying threaten your children all year about being good. I'm not even saying to over-indulge your children with enormous gifts. I'm just saying that perhaps helping to cultivate magic and mystery in your child's life is not such a bad thing. If you object to the lying thing, then, go the whole hog, throw out fairies, elves, gnomes, angels, dragons, unicorns, because they don't exist either. Just in case one day your poor child will discover that they aren't true, and that you, evil parent, were just lying to them every time you read them a bedtime story.

Christmas is coming...and mama's getting panicked!

Life has been fraught in the Pink House - sick children, non sleeping baby (see Adventures without Sleep, written about Number 1 child five years ago, and just slot in Number 3's name in its place!) And having got hyper excited about Christmas back in September, and decorated the house on 1st December, to occupy sick kiddies, we are now less than 2 weeks to Christmas, only 6 days till my mum arrives. I need to get motoring. I have lists to write, and lots of them - shopping lists, cooking lists, Christmas card lists, lists of lists.

Reading Delia's Smith's Christmas book in bed this morning, post-it note bookmarks to hand, she gently says "to avoid panicking, you should get planning and write lists in mid-October." OCTOBER! It's now mid December. I have no lists. I am panicking. So no more blogging for this mama, (boo hoo) instead I will be writing lists. And bleeping Christmas cards, addressing them (by memory as I've lost my address book, grrr!) Though I do have EVERYONE'S pressies bought. Hurray!