Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

So. Christmas is almost upon us. Is everyone ready?

I'm not.

Today I got a candle and Yuki got two red knot bones.

We've finished decorating the tree. It's very birdy this year. Full of birds. I stayed in the bath too long again (I very nearly fell asleep again) so my hair still isn't dry. Then again I did end up getting in at about 12am due to various reasons. Mum lost my shampoo for some reason it was in the dog food bag. The mind boggles.

We did our final Christmas shopping. Tesco was packed. Seriously, the second I got in there I was filled with murderous rage and contempt. So many people going around so slowly.

I got mum to make a list of things we needed to get still or had forgotten on Tuesday and we got everything on the list except stuffing. I hate stuffing. All kinds I've tried. Something about them is nasty. Also Napoleon's stopped eating it now too so mum's the only one who eats it, so she didn't mind not getting it.

I also got myself another bag of flour because A lot of the things I want to bake need a lot of flour.

Today I had a go at the quickest recipe I've listed for Christmas, syrup cookies. More like biscuits really. There was no picture to show how they'd turn out so I had to guess.

You know when you bake things like that and sometimes the dough pretty much stays in shape, of swells just a bit. This one spread out and flattened completely. Now if I were making them for my own consumption then I wouldn't mind the silly, uneven blobs and the clear lines where I've had to separate them because they were all stuck together. But it wasn't what I wanted to serve other people. So I got my star cutters and cut stars out in the middles of the cookies while they were still hot and soft. I didn't want to have those ugly lines on my nice stars so I had to do it where they weren't joined together. I got 8 assorted star shapes and saved the leftovers for us. Mum quite liked them and we ate all the leftovers pretty quickly.

We decided that next time I made them I should just make a flat slab and cut it while it was still warm. I took the dog out and baked a second batch this way. I got 9 stars of assorted sizes. I'm quite pleased with myself. Even if I don't have time to bake all the things I wanted to bake at least I can say I've baked some Christmas cookies. Because it's so simple I could just bake those cookies for Christmas. It'd be quite a waste though, since that's the only recipe that uses self raising and not plain flour .

That's all for now.

Bluebiird out.

Oh. Totally forgot about the really super scary thing with the car. Mum had it serviced recently. 4 new tires. Pretty expensive job. It was fine on Tuesday. Today it started making a noise. It was on mum's side and sounded as if something was loose. She pulled over to have a look but let's face it car repair isn't our speciality and we only had about an hour before Tesco closed for the day.

If she turned a corner too sharply or went over the slightest bump or dip we'd here it. We were so jumpy and mum got a stomach ache due to nerves. I was a little different. I kept shrieking every time we heard it and my heart would beat twice as fast. Stomach was fine though.

We made it to Tesco in one piece, and made it back home too. But as mum was parking we heard an awful noise. Assuming something was loose then it either dropped completely or snapped or something because that was unnatural. She's going to call the garage about it tomorrow but doubts they'll be able to fit her in. She wants me to call Napoleon tomorrow to ask if he'll have a look and see if anything's loose on Christmas Day, assuming the weather's okay.