PREPARE YE THE WAY....................

Well Christmas has come and gone again and here's a little peek at how we prepared for this special day....

Our Christmas tree that we thought was just "Awesome" approximately 30ish years ago (Steve was around 4 years old when we purchased it from John Martins in Adelaide), is slightly worse for wear. A few branches have fallen away and it's nowhere near as tall as it was when we bought it!!! So I had decided that we would just go with the little fibre optic for another year until we found a new one...........BUT the girls asked, "When are you putting your tree up Nan?" And I thought why not, just one more year and away they went opening the decoration boxes, oohing and aahhing over the different trinkets that we have kept over the years.

Whenever we travel overseas we endeavour to purchase a Christmas decoration for our tree, so though it is not particularly beautiful it holds memories of our travels, some given to us by friends and memories of our own boys at a very young age decorating the tree with some of the decorations still being used right up until now!
"Where's this one from Nan?" "That's the one we just bought in China Tulle, it is hand made from copper, hand painted and fired up to 8 times to make it look so beautiful. It is called Cloissonne."

"Where's this one from Nan?" "Well Tulle, that one's from Target in Mount Gambier!"

"What about this one Nan?" says Baie, "That's from Peru in South America and it's a little Nativity scene placed inside a gourd". "What's a gourd Nan?!"....................
They did a lovely job of it and this year the tree was decorated from the bottom right to the top - Baie can finally reach right up!

Then comes the Christmas baking:
The Christmas Cake, Cookies, Fudge, Caramel Popcorn
(Fudge in the tin already!).

And of course there's the pudding!

Ingredients at the ready and the pot ready to boil.


The coins (pre 1966) are scrubbed and ready to go into the pudding mixture.

And the fun begins - how lucky am I to have 3 MASTER CHEFS at hand!


And a husband armed with the camera for any photo opportunities!!!!! (just scooping up the butter that slithered to the floor!) I really should bend those knees :)
Now this year's pudding has a bit of a story attached - hope you have time for a short read!

Just before the point of putting the dried fruits in, that's after the rubbing of the butter into the flour....Jaime noticed that some of the fruit was out of date. No mind I say, this stuff lasts forever! Upon closer inspection found that the sultanas did in fact look a little fermented and decided to replace said fruit. Fortunately had another little stash of fruit, weighed it up, placed in bowl and proceeded with pudding mixing, tossing out fermented fruit etc. Time came to add fruit to mixture - OH MY GOSH I've tossed out the fresh fruit and put the fermented lot into pudding mix - WHAT A GOOSE! So quick trip to local supermarket for MORE fresh dried fruit and we started the whole pudding from scratch!!!!

So, on with the show! The girls proceeded with the mixing, - they are very experienced pudding makes, they've been doing it since they were old enough sit up on the bench and put their hands in the mixture!

The fruit and sugar goes in........

Add 8 lovely farm fresh free range eggs!


And then the best part of all - all hands in to mix it all up.


This year Nash was not at all keen and I had to encourage him to put his fingers in. Maybe "force" his fingers in would be more correct!


Squish, squish, squish........ much better than finger painting, especially when you get to lick your fingers afterwards!

Girls love it - Boy hates it!

Then it's wrapped and strung and put in the pot.

I'm not sure how long we have been eating this particular plum pudding recipe in our family but I do know it's longer than I've been alive and that's a LONG LONG LONG LONG LONG time :)