Willow House

The Flower Shop Christmas

Did you all have a wonderful time?

Did Santa bring you all that your hearts desired?

He popped this delightful book into my Christmas stocking

Sally Page's The Flower Shop Christmas

It's a gorgeous book reflecting on the life in  and around an English Flower Shop over 12 days leading to Christmas. Inspiring background to it too, just take a look at this extract from The Dorset Echo:

"A FLORIST who lives in Gillingham has secured a US publishing deal despite being told by mainstream UK publishers that her illustrated book was "too English" and that she was "not famous". Sally Page set up her own publishing company, Fanahan Books, after constant rejections from UK publishers who were unable to see the potential in her book, The Flower Shop. The first print of The Flower Shop was 1,500 and sold out in just a few months, so Sally has ordered a second print run, this time of 8,000 copies. Now Half Full Press in California has agreed to publish and market the book in the USA, along with her latest venture, The Flower Shop Christmas, which was launched this week. They have also asked Sally to undertake a book-signing tour of several US cities. Her books will also be available in UK bookshops after the Manning Partnership, a book sales, marketing and distribution company in Bath, said they would take on the books in the UK and Europe. The books are about an English country flower shop, Ted Martin's of Tisbury, where Sally works part-time. The first book charts a year in the life of the florist and the second takes the form of the 12 days of Christmas and reflects on life in the flower shop at this time of year. Sally said: "It was very hard to take the constant rejection that was involved in seeking a publisher for a book that I so passionately believe in. "I knew it was a good book but I found it very difficult to find someone to agree with me. "So, with my partner, Billy Kelly, we decided to take a major risk and publish the book ourselves. "Our luck changed dramatically when I met Garry Manning of the Manning Partnership, who gave the book to his wife, also Sally, to read. "She really liked it and advised Garry to take on the marketing of the book." For further information about the books, log on to englishflowershop.co.uk."

We're still in the middle of our own 12 Days of Christmas here at Willow House so I'm going to leave you with some photographs from the book and all good wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2008.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL.

Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year

(Christmas card by Lucy Clibbon)

Well I finally managed to finish purchasing the Christmas presents yesterday so now all I have to do is wrap them, do the food shopping, deck the halls with boughs of holly so to speak and bake sausage rolls and mice pies. Last minute, mad rush as usual! Needless to say I don't think I'll be around much for a while so:

MERRY CHRISTMAS & A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU.

A Treasury

Do you pop things inside books? I do and then I forget where I've put them. I always have to leaf through a book before it gets consigned to a charity shop just to make sure I don't end up sending them something I'd rather they didn't have, like a bank statement or shopping list.

Not everyone does this though and I was delighted to find these magazine clippings in my latest charity shop find :

The book is quite special too, it's jam packed full of Christmas crafts and recipes, it will keep me amused for hours, I'll just leave tou with some pictures:

Answers

During the Christmas Holidays Julia tagged me, sorry it's late but here are the answers:

Do you prefer Spring or Winter?

Both, I adore cold, crisp days, rainy days, wintery days but then as winter draws to a close I'm only too happy to welcome Spring!

Bunnies or chicks or robins and reindeer?

Robins and reindeer.

Lamb or turkey dinners?

Despite the fact that this year the tukey turned out to be the size of a small ox and took 7 hours to cook it has to be turkey. I love Christmas dinner and only need the slightest excuse to reproduce it at any time of year and besides I don't eat lamb.

Santa or the Easter Bunny?

The Easter Bunny was never around when I was a kid, don't get me wrong I did get Easter eggs it's just that the Easter Bunny wasn't part of our tradition so it has to be Santa.

Sacks of presents or Easter egg hunts around the garden?

Sacks of presents!!!

Easter tree or Christmas tree?

Neither, the tree isn't really my thing, the boys decorate trees, I do the mantle.

Daffodils or Holly?

Daffodils, so pretty and Holly is so, well, prickly.

Easter eggs or tins of Quality Street?

Definetly tins of Quality Street, you get more. Although I do have a bit of a passion for Cream Eggs - too difficult.

Easter or Christmas?

Christmas. I remember that when I was a child Christmas was favourite followed by my birthday then Easter. It all had something to do with the amount received!

I do hope nobody has noticed an element of greed in my answers.

"How are Carolyn's Chickens?" was the question being asked over at Lazy Lol.

Well as you can see they are still looking a bit scruffy but they have definetly settled in. They now scratch around and peck about like normal chickens, they even stretch their wings. They have discovered that there is more to food than layers pellets having spent the first few days studiously ignoring all other food stuffs. Despite appearances to the contrary in the above picture they seem to enjoy being outside and they are laying. They have learned to go into the hen house at night and not to try and roost in their pen but they haven't learned how to get down from their nest boxes once they get up there!

And finally Wendy asked how we celebrated New Year's Eve. Drunkenly has to be the answer. After watching "Grumpy New Year" on the BBC, the kids went off to a nighbour's party. Stuart and I drank a bottle of champagne and bemoaned the fact that we too had to attend the party, shame it wasn't black tie. By the time we had finished the champagne we had convinced ourselves that posh was the order of the day and consequently attended a party in a garage attired in dinner jacket and posh frock. I would have frozen to death had I not grabbed the  moth eaten Narnia, Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe fur coat from the almost defunct dressing up box on the way out!

Anyway a jolly good time was had by all, I think! I eventually returned home with our hostess at about 3.30am only to find husband drinking G&T's with our host in our living room. I wouldn't actually recommend champagne followed by Budweiser followed by Bombay Sapphire - I didn't get up until 3 pm on New Years Day.

Never mind start as you mean to go on!

Happy New Year

Just a quick note to wish everyone one of you a wonderful New Year. May all your hopes and dreams for 2007 come true.

The Feast of the Nativity

Visit Willow House at any time of year and you will find Icons tucked in unexpected places, even the kitchen

Ikon No.14 Vladimir

I don't know why but I just can''t resist images of The Virgin and Child

The Mother of God Enthroned of Tolga, Jaroslavl, XIVth century.

I love those elongated Byzantine faces and the huge, sad, almond shaped eyes.

As dusk falls on Christmas Eve we will light the candles around Mary, and there will be peace upon earth and goodwill to all men, at least for a little while.

Merry Christmas everyone.

A Cold and Frosty Morning.

Well the 4 aiches seem to be settling in quite nicely, I think I managed to catch the last post for the Christmas cards, Stuart has iced the cake,

bless him.

Sometime today I intend to muster the gang and go off in search of Christmas trees. Still pressies to wrap, indeed pressies to buy, food to buy, mince pies to bake. The first of the Christmas guests has been and gone, Uncle, Aunt and cousins are coming tomorrow, boy's Godfather on Saturday.

Somehow though I feel strangely calm, all is well in the little world of Willow House, I'll leave you now with some photographs of our "cold and frosty morning."

Shampoo Bottle Nativity

In mid November I promised you a "Childs Christmas Project", those of you planning to join in have hopefully been collecting your shampoo bottles. I suggested 6, but you could start off with 2. You will also need newspaper, PVA glue, paint and brushes.

We are going to make a Nativity set, this is a very Blue Peter / Art Attack type project and is great fun to do with chidren. We made ours 10 or 11 years ago and the whole family joined in. Now every year when the Christmas decorations come out we get cries of "Oh, I remember making them" and "We made those a long time ago" so over the years they have become quite special.

You start off by covering the shampoo bottles with newspaper. I remember we did put some sand in ours first to make them a little heavier and a little more stable, but you don't have to do that unless you want to.

One layer of newspaper will do but the more layers you apply the less shampoo bottle like they will look. A good trick if you are applying several layers is to use a regular newspaper for one layer followed by a coloured newspaper eg. Financial Times for the next, that way you can see what you have done. Actually I have to say that the broadsheets, especially the FT, make much better papier mache than the tabloids as the paper seems a little thicker and is slightly easier to work with.

The papier mached bottles then need to be left to dry thoroughly, possibly overnight depending on how many layers of paper you have put on. This is the ideal opportunity to make any repairs / improvements if you have been working with very young children.

Next you need to paint over the newsprint with a basecoat. Although I now use many layers of gesso when I am working with papier mache you can use whatever is available eg. white emulsion, or poster paint or acrylics.

Again leave to dry thoroughly, before decorating. The shape of the bottle will lend itself to a particular character, although I do recommend that you make Mary and Joseph first.

They are very simple shapes and the only bit that might be tricky is if someone doesn't like doing faces. If that is the case you could cut some pictures of faces out of magazines and stick those on.

When the paint is dry you can add other bits and pieces if you want to like braid around the bottom of the bottle, sequins, glitter etc. We kept ours very simple.

Mary and Joseph always come out on Chritmas Eve, followed by the shepherds later that night.

The Three Wise Men / Kings don't appear until Epithany, this gives you the opportunity to take the whole of the Christmas hols to make this, if you want to. I'm lucky, I have 3 children so when they were little they were each able to add a King to the Nativity.

So that's it, very easy to do and you can add as much artisitc detail as you want. You may want to turn a carboard box and some straw into a stable and add farm animals. You can do as little or as much as you like.

If any of you are wondering where our baby Jesus is he got eaten. In hindsight we should have painted a baby in Mary's arms but we didn't. We carefully wrapped a monkey nut in some tissue and placed it in a little homemade manger. It looked very sweet. Unfortunately at the time we had a dog who was rather fond of monkey nuts and I'm sorry to say that she stole baby Jesus away and gobbled him up. From that day on this Nativity scene has not had a baby Jesus.

My Grandmother's Christmas Cake

Now that Halloween is over and done with (and I hope a fine time was had by all) I feel at liberty to get down to Christmas. It's all very well not mentioning Christmas until December but if you are going to make your own traditional rich fruit cake for Christmas you need to get going to give it time to mature.

I would like to share my Grandmother's recipe, a firm family favourite for over 50 years, with the adults anyway. I do find that although children like the marzipan and icing they are not usually over fond of fruit cake until they get a bit older.

You will need:

• 10 ozs of currants
• 7 ozs of sultanas
• 4 ozs of raisins
• 2 1/2 ozs glace cherries cut into pieces
• 2 1/2 ozs chopped almonds
• 2 1/2 ozs mixed chopped peel
• Grated rind of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp. of brandy
• 7 ozs of plain flour
• 1 level teasp. of mixed spice
• 2 ozs of ground almonds
• 6 ozs margarine
• 6 ozs of soft brown sugar
• 1 tbsp. black treacle and
• 4 eggs

Firstly mix the dried fruits, cherries, almonds, peel and lemon rind together in a mixing bowl and pour on the brandy. Leave overnight.

Next day prepare an 8 in. round cake tin by lining it with a double thickness of greaseproof paper and greasing it. Pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 1, 290 deg.

Sieve the flour and spice together and mix with the ground almonds.

In a seperate bowl cream the margarine and sugar together until they are light and fluffy, then beat in the treacle. Next add the eggs, one at a time, with a little of the flour mixture, beating thoroughly.

Fold in the rest of the flour mixture with the prepared fruit, mixing well

Place the mixture into the prepared tin. To prevent the cake from burning you need to tie several layers of brown paper around the outside of the tin so that the paper is about 2 ins. higher than the tin. Bake in the centre of the pre-heated oven for about 4 hours.

When cooked remove from oven and allow to cool slightly before removing from the tin. Place the cake on a wire tray to fully cool before wrapping it in greaseproof paper and storing it in a tin until you are ready to marzipan and ice it.

You can feed the cake with extra brandy during it's storage period by piercing it with a skewer and pouring the brandy in the holes.

The photographs were taken from a vintage cookery book. Did I mention I've been collecting vintage cookery books well as tea sets?

Has Christmas come early?

  These were the words I heard as I walked into John Lewis on Thursday evening to be confronted with Christmas Trees! Yes it has, the Christmas decorations are in the shops.

Now in principle I don't like to mention Christmas until after Guy Fawkes but if truth be know Christmas is always on my mind. Somewhere in the background is this little voice saying, "That would be nice for Christmas", "I'll get that for Christmas" and "Auntie Ethel would love that for Christmas"! And, yes, I do buy things for Christmas all year round, including the January sales, although come December I'm usually turning out cupboards looking for the things I've stashed away and lost.

"Posy", see sidebar, (sorry, don't know how to do those lovely "here" links, anyone out there prepared to give a tutorial?) inspired me to look through all those old Christmas magazines and I've found some photographs that I'm sure some of you Caroline Zoob fans would like to see. That includes you "Nonnie" (see sidebar again)-

Caroline Zoob's front door at Christmas 

Caroline Zoob's Christmas tree

That famous sofa(as featured in a previous "Posy" post) all dessed up for Christmas

and Christmas decorations, Caroline Zoob style.

Lovely isn't it?