Cross My Apple Tart: Christmas 2011 In Our Home

I've been quiet recently, haven't I? I haven't been on here and I haven't much been on the tweet machine. If you would like to know where I've mostly been, I've been in bed with a hot water bottle or chained to the oven like a little Christmas cooking elf.

Christmas has come, the turkey has been brined, roasted and eaten. The last few scraps of it went in the bin today. The guests we had visiting left yesterday. There are still a few Christmas chocolates and biscuits around but they probably won't last much longer. I've mostly been wearing leggings as I have the fear I won't be able to get my jeans closed. But it's been great, hasn't it? There really is nothing better than a few days off work, all your favourite foods, seeing your favourite people, drinking your favourite drinks.... tea, red wine, amaretto and egg nog lattes and watching your favourite shows on tv. Heaven.

And strangely it's also the time when others say how much you must miss your passed loved ones when you really miss them every day of the year. Not just Christmas.

Here's what Christmas looked like in our Home.

This year we had my Parents-In-Law to visit from Scotland. The good news is they have sweet teeth just like me the bad news is my Father-In-Law REALLY likes ALL the soaps. I do not. Here they are two minutes after arriving getting stuck into the Christmas cake.

They are lovely though and brought me back these Cocoa Atelier pretties from Vie de Chateaux at Home when I dropped them up to the shops one afternoon. They were banging on the door of Hayden's Pub at 12 o clock in the afternoon for a glass of Guinness. They weren't admitted.

I was so excited when I came across a ginger bread boy wreath on Martha Stewart and thought it would be a great little project. It was not. We don't speak of it anymore.

The ginger bread boy fiasco was forgotten about with a rib of beef with a port and blue cheese sauce cooked by Chub. I am a lucky girl.

It was paw licking good (not that she saw any of it!)

We opened presents. I was spoiled with a voucher for a night at Neven's and with these......

We had retro-fantastic Ballymaloe Smoked Mackeral Pate and Melba Toast for Christmas Day starter.

Forgive me, I forgot to photograph the turkey (purchased from Nolans, Kilcullen). We brined the night before a la Nigella and it was amazing. We were rolled away from the table.