SUNDAY CATCH UP #3: WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!

It's the last Sunday of 2015! How is that even possible!

After a busy couple of days we are finally having a chilled day - watching Jurassic Park and eating gingerbread for breakfast! So I thought I would team up my last Sunday catch up with a quick Christmas catch up! AND it's my first post with my NEW design - so let me know what you think!


CHRISTMAS EVE (THURSDAY)

After finishing work at 2pm I cracked on with hoovering, polishing and mopping the house. Does anyone else do this? A "Christmas clean"? Or is it just me because I've been a little slack at cleaning!
I digress - My Mum and Dad popped over with our Christmas presents and we cracked open the Fox's biscuits selection box. Later on, Kieran and I wacked on the Michael Buble Christmas album and decided to try our hand at a homemade Gingerbread House!
We used our Lakeland Fairytale Cottage Mould - we used the same recipe as the gingerbread men you can find here. You just smush the mixture into the mould and put it in the oven for 25 minutes. I also made our own royal icing which is super easy and really tasty!

We had a slight collapsing mishap with the roof/walls that resulted in a gingerbread person massacre but with a shed load of icing cement, Kieran managed to restore it's structure!
We then added chocolate buttons as roof tiles - I MAY of stole this idea from watching Zoella's Gingerbread House video! - and jelly tots as Christmas lights.

Afterwards, we curled up in bed and waited for Santa!

CHRISTMAS DAY (FRIDAY)

We woke up at 6am - which is actually quite late for us, we are big kids at Christmas! - and made a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich. We then opened up our thousands of presents! We were both so spoilt - lots of baking related goodies and 3 mugs, I love our Wall-E and Eve mugs! I can't even run through everything because we got so much - as you can see from the pics!

After walking Archie and getting ready we headed to The Peak Edge Hotel for Christmas dinner with the family. The hotel is gorgeous - perfect place for a wedding! - and the tables were laid out beautifully. The food was perfect and they provided little extra's through out from shots of mulled wine and mince pie's after dinner. Afterwards we headed off for a chilled evening!

BOXING DAY (SATURDAY)

As Kieran has a large family with 2 halves we decided to have a Christmas Day part 2 with Kieran's Dad and his side of the family. I cooked my first ever Christmas dinner with turkey AND beef! Unfortunately as it was so bloody hectic by the time I sat down and was half way through my dinner that I realised I hadn't actually taken any photo's! I was super impressed with my dinner as the beef and turkey were both perfect and my roast spuds were a potatoey dream! We then moved on to playing Monopoly and eating lots of chocolate!

SUNDAY

And then we come to today.

I'm a big believer of the "Boxing Day is made for slobbing or sales" ethos but due to the Christmas Day part 2 our Boxing Day is being celebrated a day late! Thank god for that extra bank holiday tomorrow! Today's plan is to catch up on my neglected blogging, feast on left over food and watch lots of films...perfect combo in my book! We were planning to go and watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens but we are just far to comfy at home! Maybe tomorrow!
For Christmas I was given Pitch Perfect 2, Cinderella and Jurassic World on DVD (My FAVOURITE films from this year!!) so I am making my way through these whilst Kieran is playing on the Xbox. I am also slowly working my way through a box of shortbread! God I love Christmas!

I've also finally prised Archie's Christmas jumper off his furry body but here is a cute little picture of him beforehand!

I hope you all had a fab Christmas and I'm looking forward to a new year for my blog and I.

Please let me know what you think of the new design and how your Christmas has been.