It's beginning to feel alot like Christmas.....

I've been doing christmassy things today. This morning I lolled in bed whilst watching Hollyoaks and painting my nails. I can't even remember the last time I had the time to do that! It's a pretty pearl colour with tiny flecks of glitter in.

After that, M and I put the Christmas tree up, and topped it off with the lovely felt star that Penny made for me :-)

Here's the whole tree, with the stocking she made me under, and Pippin investigating.

I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen - I made crumbly vanilla fudge, which will be for the Outlaws presents. I prefer my fudge crumbly rather than soft and chewy, so instead of using condensed milk in my fudge, I use evaporated milk. This makes for a lovely crumbly texture that is irresistible, and I'm desperately trying to resist it.

I also made some cookie dough. It's 'resting' in the fridge. M's already tried to steal half the raw dough. I made it using the whipping disk thingy on my mini food processor. I've never used it before, and I love it. It made mixing so easy! The chocolate chips are some crushed almond Hershey Kisses that my sister brought me back from New York. M doesn't really like them, he thinks they're a bit bitter, and I thought he would probably eat them in cookies. If I left them in the fridge, I would have ended up eating the whole packet and my hips would not have thanked me *lol* They're a basic cookie mix, butter, sugar, self-raising flour and an egg, with crushed almond kisses. I'll let you know how they turn out. If M doesn't like them, I can always give them as gifts.

Then I was on a roll. These are some peanut butter treats for the Hound of the Baskervilles. They're even easier: wholewheat flour, baking powder, peanut butter and milk. you'll be pleased to know that they receive the Hounds seal of approval. When a dog sits in front of you drooling at the mere sight of the promised treat in your hands, then you know he likes them. I let him have one to try, and the others are going in his Christmas stocking. I know that he likes peanut butter, he has a Kong, a cone shaped hollow rubber chew that you can fill with treats to keep them busy, I often scrape a little peanut butter inside and watch him craning his tongue inside to get it all out!
By the way, I've been playing with Google Reader lately. I read about it on Ysolda's blog; you paste in the url's of your favourite blogs, and then you just log in and it tells you which one's have been updated, and takes you straight to the new page. I've probably wasted/saved alot of time being able to go straight to new pages, and to find new exciting blogs :-)