Christmas preparation is underway!

This year it has worked out that we will be celebrating Christmas as the four of us, rather than the large groups of extended family which we are used to. DD and I have started planning - unsurprisingly there will be quite a simple homemade feel to our festivities. I was planning to make a lot of the presents myself; but time has run away with me. Maybe next year??

These are our achievements so far! The very flat parcels at the back are actually Christmas cards. We have made all our Christmas cards for the past three years and the design is getting progressively simpler. Our first design involved punching, stamping, glitter glue...never again! These were very easy to produce as DD had us organised into a production line and kept us in order.

The square pieces of card are going to be bunting. They are made from a pack of cards that have been hanging around for years. For some reason I keep forgetting to use them, so this year we are going to hang them up.

The cracker at the bottom is my first attempt at a homemade cracker! I got my idea from "Homemaker" magazine. (DH bought me a subscription for my birthday. No more guilt as I surreptitiously slip one into my shopping trolley.) However, the basic idea is very clearly explained in this blog here. Not a toilet roll in sight! My cracker is a lot simpler than Torie Jayne's; no pattern punches for me, thank you very much. I will probably stick some patterned paper around the middle of the finished articles. Now I just need to decide on the contents! I am thinking chocolate at the moment...

The red and gold theme of the different decorations is entirely coincidental. I am not that coordinated as a rule. Christmas is about the birth of a baby, family and love and NOT a beautifully decorated house!

Feeling proud...

I have been quite overwhelmed by all the positive comments and support shown to me since my last post on Autistic Spectrum Disorder within my family. As you can imagine, it has been quite a tricky time for DS. He knows he is being assessed for ASD, but it is a long process and in the meantime he is unsure what it all means for him. Part of the syndrome can be "obsessions", and at the moment DS is massively into wildlife photography. During the summer he entered a couple of local competitions, but we heard nothing.

Last week was the half term holiday for us, and I took both children to Warnham nature reserve, (see post here). DD spotted it first; not a lesser spotted woodpecker or a buzzard, (although we did see both of those), but one of DS's photos on the coffee shop wall! He was one of the runners up in the junior category of their competition! We all jumped up and down with the excitement, to the bemusement of the nature lovers trying to drink their coffee in peace.

This is the photo in question - it is of a bush cricket and was actually taken by Ardingly reservoir:

We really enjoyed our walk around the reserve and DS took a few more photos:

A Peacock butterfly making the most of the autumn sunshine

Common darter dragonfly

I am a very proud mum, and the success has lifted DS. He is now planning more competition entries!

Autistic Spectrum Disorder

This is normally a light and fluffy blog, more vanilla ice cream than steak and chips! Those of you who are kind enough to read my witterings regularly will notice that my output has slowed considerably since the summer. I have thought long and hard about writing this post as it involves others rather than myself. However, I have decided to open up a little.

In the summer my lovely husband was diagnosed with high functioning autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Most of you will know this as Asperger's syndrome. In a nutshell it means that he has problems with processing information; he can't filter out irrelevant information so occasionally it all gets a bit much. Social communication is difficult; he has had to learn how to pick up social cues etc. There are some positive aspects - he can be very focussed and is therefore very good at his job.

Partly on the back of this diagnosis, and partly because of struggles at school, DS, (age 10), has been referred by the school for an assessment for ASD. He is almost certainly borderline, but as he matures it is becoming more obvious that he needs some support. 

In one way my reality has not changed. You are born with ASD; you don't "catch" it. DH has always had ASD, and after seventeen years of marriage we have developed ways of coping. In fact, his diagnosis has enabled us to make sense of his struggles and find some external help. DS has always been a little "different" to other children. Despite knowing this in my head, for a while I felt really upset. I am finding it difficult to contact others who have partners with ASD - although I have found quite a few whose relationships didn't last. However, I do have friends who are being very supportive, and I have good friends who have children with ASD. Life continues, but the journey is different than we expected.

Coconut ice

When I was a teenager my Mum had a "Woman's Own Cook Book" which I found fascinating. It had been an engagement present. My Dad still has the book, complete with all the recipes Mum had stuck in the back. He's not allowed to throw it away!

Picture from Amazon

It had chapters on everything, including one on how to put on weight! (Not one I can imagine being written these days. If you are interested, it involved eating ice cream in bed!) One of my favourite sections was on making sweets and I often made peppermint creams (remember those?) and the like. I was very lucky that Mum was happy for me to make a mess of her kitchen, as long as I cleared up afterwards. 

A few days ago DD and I decided that we just had to make coconut ice. It is extremely easy to make and doesn't need any cooking. We used a recipe from a magazine, (more on that in another post), but there is a very similar recipe here. The recipe we used stipulated red food colouring - this is definitely not the best. Instead of pretty pink and white coconut ice we ended up with vaguely peachy/tomatoey and white coconut ice. It still tasted great though, although I must have grown up as I can only manage one piece these days!

Diddly squash

One of the things that I love about my veg box is enjoying the seasonal veg. Autumn is particularly interesting and a few weeks ago my veg box contained these little fellows:

The coin is a British 10p which is only a few centimetres across. These were seriously diddly squash. There was no way I was going to peel them! For a while they sat on my shelf looking decorative but eventually I decided to roast them whole and stuff them with bolognese.

I followed the instructions from my very helpful veg box people. I decapitated them and scooped out the innards with a melon-baller. Not as gruesome as it sounds! Then I brushed the inside with some olive oil and shoved them in a hot oven. These only took 15 minutes to cook. Then I filled them with some bolognese I'd had on the go in the slow cooker all day, topped with grated cheese and voila!

Scanning and shopping - moral dilemmas of our time!

I find shopping in a supermarket to be a minefield of ethical decisions. Fairtrade, organic, seasonal, local, high welfare? Should I be shopping there in the first place, when the high street is in trouble? And how do I balance ethics with my budget? Now there is a new moral quandary to add to the list - do I scan and shop?

In my area the battle for the high street has been lost; I have no local greengrocer, fishmonger, butcher or baker. It takes me 15 minutes to walk to a very busy T*sco Extra, which stocks just about anything you are likely to want to buy from tomatoes to televisions. In the last few weeks they have introduced a new system which I tried out this week. I was issued with a hand-held scanner, and as I did my shopping I scanned each item and packed it straight into a bag. When I had finished I used a self-service till to pay - no unpacking and repacking at the checkout.

I quite enjoyed it, the scanner beeped satisfyingly at each item and showed me how much it cost and my running total. I did a weekly shop for a family of four in just over an hour. So far, so good. Now for the moral quandary - there is obviously less need for staff with this system. An assistant poked around in my shopping to make sure I wasn't making off with a leg of lamb, but she was in charge of eight tills rather than one. So am I depriving people of work? Am I contributing to the dehumanizing of society? Or am I pining after a world of friendly shopkeepers which no longer exists, and should I bravely face the future, scanner in hand? Should I stop worrying so much?!

Rescuing a bromeliad...

 

The bromeliad was in need of a good home. Unloved and uncared for, embarrassed by its yellow sticker and ashamed of a chipped vase, it lurked in the reduced section. Would anyone choose it? Was it forever condemned to life in a supermarket?

Suddenly it found itself lifted up, and unceremoniously thrust in among the potatoes and loaves of bread. Uncertain of its future, and hardly daring to hope, it waited as it was pitched around between trolley and car. Finally it came to rest. The dirt was brushed from its leaves, life-giving water was sprinkled over its compost and it was gently placed on a sunny dressing table. Life had begun...