So, Christmas day 2022 has been and gone. What a wonderful day we all had.

My fantastic kids, who know me better than anyone ever could, bought me some wonderful presents which are absolutely in keeping with, well, me.

A very swish palette for my watercolour painting. I’ve been making do with an old, and a bit small, plate. I can’t wait to try it out. As my studio is used for eating and merry making over the Christmas period, because the atmosphere is lovely in there. I’ll have to wait for a few days yet but then it’s full steam ahead!

They also bought me a wool winder to make my spinning process easier. I was hoping to buy a second hand spinning wheel after Christmas but since I’ve lost my job, I’ll have to think about how I’m going to do it.

I was also very grateful to receive as a gift a treble (alto) recorder, I have the full family now. I was also given a John Dowland music book for my guitar. a t-shirt with my beloved Byron black cat on it some croccante and the star of the show, a raclette. A special grill to melt cheese and to grill food, for group eating. I’m so excited about it. It’s going to be christened this evening.

Our Christmas days are full on, after opening our presents. We “hit” the kitchen and get everything ready for lunch which gets underway, finally, at 3 pm. As I don’t eat meat, I made, a day in advance, a chestnut and redwine pâté en croute, delicious.

I have been making this for decades now and love it so much that we never want to change!

We like to do an opulent look for our table a sort of modern medieval, if you like. We used to strew nuts and fruits such as tangerines and apples on our table, but we’ve become increasingly busy over the years so now we strew, holly, artificial berries and tinsel which looks lovely.

Our lunch goes on for a very long time. We give ourselves a long, long break, at the table, between our main course and our puddings!

We finish with a slice of my Christmas cake. I don’t do a traditional one, but a simple iced and spiced fruit cake which is boiled and soaked (the fruit) to make it very moist.

It comes after traditional Christmas pud and mince pies!

In case you’re wondering, we don’t “do” the Italian Christmas which isn’t really as opulent as we like to do. Chrismas meals tend to be tortelli in brodo and lasagne so we have stuck to our own family tradition.

We couldn’t get any marzipan this year here in Italy. I found some on Amazon but it was very expensive, so, as only 50% of the household likes marzipan, we just used icing. Hopefully, next year we’ll find some earlier!

After eating, I normally Skype my mum then the rest of the evening is spent either playing games or watching some Christmassy film or tv. Last night we were all exhausted. It’s been a bit of a stressful few days as we’ve lost over half our household income so our minds have been very active.

Now we just need to look forwards to a new year, new start, new attitude, and I’m feeling very excited and positive about what we can do!