A fortnight to go until Christmas.  We're doing fairly well on the Christmas shopping.  Yesterday, we went to Ikea to get our Christmas tree.  It's a Nordmann fir, and it smells gorgeous.  Andrew put it in its holder, watched by three very curious pointy noses.  While I decorated it, Andrew put up the lights outside and in the windows so the house looks very festive now.  The Advent candle is lit every night, I've brought out various other Christmas candles and ornaments including a lovely Christmas cross stitch sampler. 

A big batch of cards has been made and posted, with some more to go over the next few days.  I worked this afternoon, and while I was out, Andrew was busy cooking.  He did a gorgeous braised pheasant in cider with parsnip mash and made a wonderful pumpkin pie with a recipe he found on an American website.  The quantities in the original were enormous so he cut them down by half.  Now that we've bought our cup measures from Lakeland, following American recipes is a whole lot easier.  Before, I'd often see things I'd want to try but would be put off by the laborious mental arithmetic of converting cups to imperial, and sometimes into metric.  Now, we can just measure away - much quicker and easier.  

The filling in the pie was a mix of roasted pumpkin flesh, dark sugar, evaporated milk, eggs, and a glorious selection of spices including nutmeg, cinnamon etc.  Sniffing the mixture was wonderful and it smelled very festive.  The mix can also be used in pumpkin bread which I think sounds great.  We may have to try that.  

This week, the weather has got a lot colder.  We had our first proper frost, and all the dogs are now wearing their housecoats at night plus their very warmest coats when out for a walk.  Booty's coat was a gift from Paula - it originally belonged to Jim, but when he died earlier this year, she kindly gave it to us as Jim and Booty are very similar in size.  Seeing her wear it now that the weather is so cold made me think of Jim and of course also of Paula - this time of year reminds me of her strongly as she loved it so much.  It's surprising how much you can miss a friend and even though things have slowly eased, there are still some days when it really hurts, but oddly, in a good way, since the memories are such happy ones.