Christmas Hoarding Part 4

Christmas Hoarding covers a multitude of sins for me as I am ever on the look out for bits and bobs for presenting food on; and this morning on a foray to the charity shop I came up with a narrow white thin mirror edged in white with some gold decoration and a lovely cobalt blue cake stand that reminded me slightly of icicles and some Christmas baubles.  And there you are thinking she really has lost the plot this is about Christmas Hoarding putting food up  and making food up so that you have a wider scope of ingredients to work from and then thus have a bigger choice of recipes to actually make.  Well for me its a bit about everything - the word "hoarding" means literally putting by so anything that is put by for the Christmas season for me comes under the category of "hoarding" or purely in respect of food items that I have made "The Put Down".

I spotted the cake stand first; cake stands of any description are a serious weakness with me and I have several. They can be used individually or stacked together and filled with food or with tea lights to create a lovely display on your Christmas table. I was quite taken with the cake stand from the first and I thought it would be the ideal cake stand to actually show off a cake/dessert which tin I purchased last year from Lakeland in the shape of a star and which you can use in the oven or the freezer or alternatively the star cake tin that I also purchased last year.  So there is a method in my madness somewhere.

Now what does she want with the mirror;  Well this is required as a centre piece for my large pine table.  I intend to centre it on the table and then either dress up with greenery  and have a candleabra either side and then little bits and bobs of interest as with the candlelight it will create more light on the table via reflection and make the table look bigger than it is, especially when the table is dressed with a nice cloth and good quality Crystal as well as coloured glass.  Well that is the plan.  I thought I might get some of this years teasels and paint them gold as well as some cones and scatter them over the mirror as well.  If we go for a walk over the weekend I will probably collect some then.

I have also found a few odd Christmas baubles which are glass and also some beaded items which can be hung from some of my faux garlands which I usually have around the house.

So for a few pounds (£17.50 in all - the cake stand was £9.50 the baubles 50 pence each and the mirror £4) I have bought some items which will do very nicely in the greater scheme of making things look nice and make things look as though you have really rolled the ball out and spent an arm and a leg in the process.  A few simple touches here and there make all the difference.I love making things look nice and I love entertaining.  I also take great pleasure in bringing out the "treasures" those decorations and items of use that have memories or that I have had for years well wrapped in tissue and stored safely.

I have also bought a couple of things for the Food Store this week:

• A Tin of Celebrations
• A Tin of Heroes. (the two tins were £6 each or buy two together for £10)
• 2 Boxes of After Eight Mints. (£2 a box at the moment - the bigger box)

 I have also dried 6 Faggots of Rosemary, some Sage, Oregano, Parsley and Thyme and Bay as well as making some Apricot Jam (needed for the Christmas cake), some plum chutney and cordial as well as some more bottled plums for the sugar plums I intend to do for Christmas. So I have my work cut out in between doing everything else and there is still plenty of other things on the list that need to be done.  I have my eye on some grapefruit curd and also cordial as well as passionfruit gin and curd.

There is always loads to do at this time of year.

Catch you soon

Pattypan

xxxx