Dear Father Christmas...

Daisy has written her annual letter to Santa. This year she has asked for the following:

A Magic Rise Oven

An Air Swimmer

Aqua Beads

A Box of Shocks

Elefun

Smash Putatoes (sic)

Squinkie Adventure

Lollypop Maker

Disney Snow Globe Maker

Dino Bites

I suspect that the majority of this list has been suggested by Molly, who in turn appears to have drawn her inspiration from a single advert break on Boomerang. As far as I am aware Daisy has not previously expressed any interest in any of the toys on her list (with the notable exception of the Air Swimmer - but more about that later). Neither, come to think of it, has she expressed any enthusiasm for the present that she is in fact going to receive this year. Colin and I have decided that Harry Potter Lego is the way forward and we are very much looking forward to building it on Christmas morning. 

I am confident that Daisy will not have time to dwell upon her disappointment at not receiving Smash Putatoes on Christmas day. She will be too busy cowering behind the sofa as she is menaced by a giant, helium-filled, radio-controlled clown fish. Courtesy of Auntie Jane we have already taken delivery of a disappointingly flat Air Swimmer. Initially I had planned to make a Christmas Eve excursion to our local party emporium to have the fish filled with helium, but have now decided that this is simply asking for trouble. It would be hard to explain to Molly and Daisy that their present had simply swum away. Also, assuming I did make it home safely with my floating aquatic friend, I cannot think of anywhere we could hide a six-foot clown fish overnight.

I decided instead to procure our very own canister of helium, thus enabling us to secretly fill the fish after bedtime, refill him as required and of course to inhale helium to our hearts content. I do enjoy a shopping challenge and I have to confess that it was not only a quest for Airmiles that led me to my rather expensive accident on Tesco's forecourt a couple of weeks ago. I was secretly checking out the price of helium at the party shop next to Tesco under the pretext of a trip to buy fuel. I suspect that a head filled with thoughts of bargain helium may have contributed to my otherwise inexplicable decision to fill my diesel car with £60 of unleaded petrol. Although I have subsequently found and ordered cheaper helium online, the £3.50 I have saved, does not make up for the gut wrenchingly enormous cost of having my tank emptied, cleaned and refilled.

The Peacock of Doom

Like a giant inflatable fish, Christmas is looming. I am surprisingly well prepared this year. Although I have once again failed to procure Heston's Christmas pudding, the tree is up, the presents have been purchased (largely online and also on credit - but think of the airmiles!) cards have been bought, though admittedly not yet written. I have overcome my horror at the small fortune demanded in exchange for three books of second class stamps. I have bought tasteful yet economical wrapping paper and a make-your-own crackers kit. I am not sure if Father Christmas will be requiring his own secret wrapping paper this year, but I suspect he probably still will.

I have already received one (disappointingly short) round robin letter. I love them. Each year I plan to write one myself, maybe this year I will. We always get a splendid one from the parents of one of Colin's friends in America and I very much look forward to my annual update on the lives of Bob and Marie. Although I have never met them I really enjoy reading about their ups and downs. Their sincere gratitude for their blessings in life is genuinely heartwarming. I really do like Christmas. I don't think I could make it through the winter without it. I delight in tinsel and fairy lights, I enjoy a carol, I relish a mince pie. The Festive Season is a time for traditions and second only to a theme, my next favourite thing is a tradition. This year as they have done for as long as they can remember, Molly and Daisy will leave a mince pie and a glass of Shadowbush Sloe Gin out for Father Christmas and a carrot and a bag of reindeer food for Rudolph (a lucrative mixture of porridge oats and glitter procured at the school christmas fayre). I have once again ceremonially tied the Peacock of Doom to the penultimate branch of the tree. Christmas is also a time for family and against all better judgement and previous experience, I am looking forward to spending it with mine. Like the boy in the John Lewis advert, I can barely wait to present my sister with the needle-felted cardigan I have lovingly crafted for her from one of my old jumpers which shrank in the wash (Oh Kirstie Allsop, what would I do without you?). I am also happy that the crew of HMS Ocean will be home for Christmas. Their homecoming video had apparently had one and a half million views on Youtube, according to the BBC it made Mariah Carey's day and I can confirm that it improved Molly and Daisy's morning too.

Molly and Daisy watching HMS Ocean's version of All I want for Christmas

Getting Started...

I wish I could play a musical instrument. I wish I had practiced as a child. I wish my mother hadn't (quite reasonably) allowed me to give up. Consequently I am reluctant to let Molly abandon the recorder even though daily practice almost inevitably results in one of us crying and rolling on the floor.

Yesterday, when I suggested that she might like to adhere more thoroughly to the music as written, rather than playing the notes freestyle, she decided to leave home. She stormed upstairs and began to pack her suitcase. I can only wonder what motivated her to include her yellow school swimming hat.

Anyway to cut a long story short, after some encouragement via facebook in response to the swimming hat post, I have decided to try writing a blog. As a result I am now entertaining fantasies of publishing deals, world domination and endless riches, in the style of JK Rowling. Predictably starting a blog has not turned out to be a simple process, I have spent most of the morning ignoring my family, trying to set up a new e-mail account and a new g-mail account, getting Colin to take a photograph of a fishfinger in my pocket and signing up for a blog. Not to mention fending off ever more desperate requests for breakfast, establishing that advent calendars may not be opened until Thursday and spending 40 minutes on the phone talking my irate mother through her dysfunctional e-mail programme. 

I have promised Molly that I will assist her in her quest to become Junior Bake Off champion 2013. Today this involves making cranberry and white chocolate muffins. Yesterday, with considerable guilt, I bought myself a holly leaf shaped plunger cutter, which will make me very happy as I will be able to create my very own embossed sugar paste holly leaves. The guilt was not so much about the cost of the cutter itself (£3.49 to which Colin's response was "How much?"), it was the additional expense of the nice red cupcake cases, the specialist 'holly green' food colouring and a large block of flower sugar paste. I did get a small amount of change from a £10 pound note, but since Colin has just finished work I am supposed to be economising and cutting back to essentials. In my mind, at the time, all four items seemed  fairly essential to producing Christmas cupcakes.

My other problem is that I have become mildly obsessed with airmiles, or Avios as they have now been rebranded. I have 15000, I need 40,000 to get myself and Colin to New York and back to celebrate my 40th birthday in 2013. The girls are not invited. I am mentally justifying most of my pre-christmas expenditure by consoling myself with the avios I am racking up.

Molly has just interrupted again, complaining that there is no number 19 on her advent calendar. Needless to say, there is. A mountain of washing is still awaiting my attention, the dishwasher needs emptying, the chickens need cleaning and Molly is already sorting out her ingredients...

Cranberry and White Chocolate Muffins

1. Measure and mix caster sugar and butter without too many problems.
2. Retrieve pebble weights from Donk's spaceship.
3. Berate sous-chef for eating aforementioned mixture.
4. Add more eggs than recommended due to smallness of eggs.
5. Pick out bits of shell and straw from mix.
6. Allow sous-chef to use handheld electric whisk to splatter mixture across worksurface.
7. Add plain flour, bicarb and baking powder carefully, emphasising importance of level spoonfuls.
8. Allow Sous chef to use electric whisk again, this time to create impressive dust clouds in kitchen.
9. Sous chef chokes on aforementioned dust cloud and falls off stool.
10. Add Craisins and whole bag of white chocolate chips.
11. Remind sous-chef repeatedly to put only a small dollop of mixture into lovely red cases, avoiding getting mixture all over tin, self and kitchen..
12. Banish sous-chef from kitchen and finish the job properly.

13. Closely supervise precarious placing of cakes in hot oven and bake for approximately 15 minutes.
14. Estimate remaining bake time, having forgotten to set timer.
15. Demand that sous-chef helps with washing up.
16. Order sous-chef out of kitchen and finish washing up properly.
17. Use lovely new plunger-cutter to make holly leaves from sugar paste, sprinkling liberally with edible green glitter.
18. Persuade sous-chef that marshmallow frosting involving whisking egg whites and sugar over a bain-marie is ambitious. Use ready rolled fondant left over from Halloween instead.
19. Use peach schnapps leftover from last Christmas mixed with apricot jam to glue fondant in place.
20. Forbid sous-chef from drinking peach schnapps.
21. Spend considerable amount of time making tiny balls of red fondant icing then dipping them in red edible glitter, becoming increasingly annoyed with sous chef, self and general unavailability of shiny red cake decorating ball type things.
22. Assemble cupcakes and allow sous-chef to take all credit for production of cupcakes.
23. Congratulate sous-chef and speculate on sous-chef's chances of victory on Junior Bake Off.
24. Abandon horrible mess in kitchen, ignore family and post on new and exciting blog.....