A Sunday afternoon in November

The weather outside is frightful and its not snowing, its just raining incessantly.  We are making the most of this horrid weather by getting some jobs done inside the house.  I'm starting to plan Christmas as we have eight of us for Christmas lunch this year.  Next weekend will see me making the Christmas pudding, but this weekend I am checking the larder supplies...

We have a jar of Pickled shallots which will hopefully be ready for Christmas and a lot of chutney and pickle, of varying ages, some of which will be donated to the local church fete.  Most importantly I still have a large jar and a half of mincemeat.

Whilst I was fussing around the larder, Mr C was busy upholstering our dining room chairs.  We have been looking for some nice material for ages, and everything we liked was extremely expensive.  Then a few weeks ago we found some really good quality curtains in a charity shop...

So we cut up the material and Mr C got to work...

This material has reupholsted six chairs and we still have a lot left over.  And all for the princely sum of £6!

We now have our dining room chairs looking wonderful for Christmas.  We also found some lovely smaller wine glasses which will take pride of place on our Christmas table.

Larder love

We have always looked with longing at those old fashioned walk in larders you see in old houses (usually on the television).  Our house is quite old, possibly 150 years old, but it didn't have a larder.  Being the types who love preserving and home made food, we were starting to overwhelm our boring modern kitchen cupboards.  Then we had an idea of converting what was a dead wall space in a small room off the kitchen that housed the washing machine.  The space is always slightly cool and dark, and is away from the steamy confines of the kitchen.  So after a lot of sanding and painting, and making of shelves by Mr C, we finally started filling the shelves at the weekend and voila, we have a very old fashioned looking larder taking shape!

So together with the store cupboard items, our home made preserves, and our lovely 1930s glass light shade, we added some of our cornishware, and yesterday I added the Christmas pudding I've just made onto the top shelf.  Bliss!