It's felt like a really long week.
We had a couple of very early mornings butchering venison, which began with a still moonlit walk down the croft land to the village. We did some winkle picking. We did lots of collecting wood for the burner. I did ever such a lot of chocolate making, baking, finishing off crafts and preparing for the Rum Christmas Fayre.
Today we had our first snow here in the village (we had a fall earlier in the high peaks but nothing you could run outside shrieking to dance about in!) and we set up the community hall with all our festive wares. We had mince pies and mulled wine, handmade chocolates and truffles, fudge, knitted and crocheted and felted tree decorations, various scarves, hats, gloves and socks, soaps, scrubs and body butter lotions and potions and a range of Rum Christmas cards from Dragon. Various islanders brought along things to sell but the main offering was from Fliss and I which we have spent the last few weeks beavering away to create.
It all looked, smelt and tasted delicious!
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| moonlit mornings |
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| welcome to the Rum Christmas Fayre |
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| crochet Christmas tree treasures |
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| snowflakes, trees, robins and oranges dried out on our logburner |
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| twinkly things |
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| chocolate truffles |
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| chocolate creams |
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| chocolate creams |
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| chocolate creams |
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| scarves inspired by Rum - October, Sunset, Stormy Skies, the sea is alive! |
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| roll up, roll up! |
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| hot chocolate |
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| Dragon with his range of Rum inspired Christmas cards, a top seller! |
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| snow! yes she does have bare feet! |
Highlight of the afternoon was the mince pie competition - we had 8 entries I think ranging from traditional shortcrust with icing sugar dusting to mincemeat muffins and pasties and a HUGE pie from Jinty. We roped in Doug the ghillie to taste test and judge and he proclaimed Izzy the winner!
I love days like today - lots of the community turning out, various people doing what they do best - some making and baking, some trying and buying. In our old life we would be travelling to our annual Christmas camp in the next few days to spend a week with friends, exchanging gifts, singing Christmas songs, enjoying being together in the run up to Christmas. We're not able to do that any more but today was a great start to the new traditions and customs for us in our new lives. Bring on the tinsel, Christmas is a-coming!
we will miss you in person next week, but you will be there in spirit :) you never know, we might all text you at 2am or something!
ReplyDeletechristmas is a community thing, and am so glad you have good community where you are :)
Your chocolates and tree decorations are really fantastic. I agree with Helen community is a key to Christmas and its really warming to see that people still celebrating together.
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