Does Grand Marnier go off?

Am I the only woman who hates going to the hairdresser? 

Today it was time for my pre-Christmas trip to tidy up the frizz and cover up the grey.  As usual a gale was blowing outside and by the time I walked back to the car, the torrential rain greeted me like horizontal spears straight into my face.  I didn’t really care as I never plan to go out after a hair appointment, I always feel utterly shattered after sitting doing nothing but absorbing all the latest gossip from Hello and OK magazines and having to smile sweetly as the latest junior stabs me with her fingernail, whilst trying to give that relaxing massage.  Then there is something about having my hair fiddled with for hours and finally blow dried, that makes me just want to close my eyes.  It is a necessary endurance, I like the colour they manage to create and the style they cut, but I can achieve a much better look when I do the blow drying at home.

No time to sit and relax when I get home, the Christmas cake has been marinating for the last three days so it’s about time I whipped up the rest of the ingredients and put the little beauty in the oven.

Yes, I know it is very late to make the cake, but my trusty Good Housekeeping recipe has never let me down and it is the only Christmas cake ever to be finished in this house. There will be such a wonderful aroma throughout the house in a couple of hours,  that really will start the Christmas mood.  

I do hope I have done the right thing though, do liqueurs have a sell by date?  I intended to add a few slugs of Cointreau to the fruit mix and discovered that a ‘little mouse’ in the house must have developed a taste for it!  However, sitting next to the near empty Cointreau was a very old bottle of Grand Marnier.  Oh how I used to love a drop of this, I had forgotten we still had this delightful nectar, so tried a tiny sip. Yum! That was great, so the fruit has been enjoying a good soak for a few days and I’m sure it doesn’t go off.

Little Darlings!

They never grow up!  Or maybe we just don’t want to let them?

1^st December arrived and the eager faces were so relieved to see their chocolate Advent Calendars lying on the breakfast table. The traditional fabric calendar had been mounted in its usual place in the kitchen, with the little pockets of numbered stockings ready to offer tasty sweet treats for the next month!  Yes I know they are young adults, but it is a tradition and they love it, so do I!

It doesn’t stop there they still have their elaborate embroidered stockings, heirlooms I hope, which have to be hung by the fireplace on Christmas Eve to receive the annual supply of special extravagant toiletries to keep them fragrant for the next year!

Finally it actually feels like it is really December and we can be thinking of these things.  Only last week I sat out in the sun with a coffee, next to summer flowers which are clinging on despite the lack of daylight hours, being buzzed by enormous confused bees, whilst I made my lists for all the Christmas preparations.  It somehow didn’t feel quite right.  

No need to worry now, the chill wind sending shoppers scurrying, makes sense of the pretty Christmas trees on every street corner and the twinkling lights across the streets. Freezing days have arrived, the coats and gloves are out and I am sticking to my theory of a bad winter looming due to the trees being laden down with berries, being the country-girl that I am at heart!