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My 2021 TBR List 📚

Hi guys 👋🏻

2021 is here and of course that means a fresh start to the reading for the year.

I still have one more festive book to read, that I was gifted for Christmas, ‘Finding Love at the Christmas Market’ By Jo Thomas.

This is the first book I’ve started in 2021.

I’ve complied a list of my TBR (to be read) books for the coming year… it’s quite a mixture but I like that!! I can’t wait to get stuck in.

  • The Winter Garden by Heidi Swain
  • Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh
  • Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
  • The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith
  • Normal people by Sally Rooney
  • The Holiday by T.M Logan
  • An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
  • Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
  • Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls
  • Girl, Other Women by Bernardine Evaristo
  • Dear NHS by Adam Kay
  • The Land of Stories: A Grimm Warning by Chris Colfer
  • My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
  • The Lido by Libby Page
  • Once Upon a Tyne by Ant & Dec

Which books are on your ‘To be read list’ ??

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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My 2020 Reading Challenge: The Fourth and Final Quarter 📚

So, here it is! The final instalment of my 2020 reading challenge, and the final quarter…

October, November, December

Let’s have a look at what I have read during this quarter…

Books I’ve read:

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

Where the Crawdads sing by Delia Owen

The Kindness Club at Mapleberry Lane: A Summer Suprise by Helen Rolfe

The Kindness Club at Mapleberry Lane: An Autumn Promise by Helen Rolfe

Coming home to Glendale Hall by Victoria Walters

New beginnings at Glendale Hall by Victoria Walters

Hopeful hearts at Glendale Hall by Victoria Walters

The Christmas Killer by Alex Pine

The Midnight Library is one of my favourite books that I have read this year. Its fantastic and I have recommended it to so many people already.

It’s so thought provoking and interesting, but gripping too.

I can’t recommend it enough

Alot of these were a similar type of book this quarter, easy readers. These are some of my favourite types of books, cosy, romantic, lovely and easy to pick up and get through, so I was super pleased to discover the Glendale series in particular.

I didn’t get through as many of my festive reads as I would have liked but I have one more on the cards for January, I recieved it as a gift for Christmas, from my sister.

It’s called ‘Finding Love at the Christmas Market’ by Jo thomas.

I haven’t quite decided how my reading challenge will take shape this year yet… maybe I will continue with the quarterly updates or I may go back to a monthly update, either way, keep your eyes peeled for that!

What’s been your favourite book of 2020?

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Festive Leftovers 🥧🎄

Hi guys! 👋🏻

Now I don’t usually post after Blogmas until New Year but, I felt inspired and we all have a bit more time on our hands at the mo don’t we!

So, heres my festive leftover pie!

Perfect after those big roast dinners on Christmas day and great for being a bit thrifty.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • A sheet or block of puff pastry
  • Leftover turkey
  • Leftover veg
  • Bacon or leftover Pig in blankets
  • 3 table spoons of double cream
  • A little milk
  • Cranberry sauce
  • A little grated cheese (optional)
  • Salt, pepper & garlic powdee to season

Lay out/or roll out your pastry. Cover the pastry (leaving half an inch around the edge free) with your cranberry sauce.

Heat up the cream and milk lightly, simmering it. Season.

Fry off some bacon.

Add your Turkey and bacon into the bubbly, creamy mixture.

I would also add the leftover veg at this point too. I added frozen peas to mine as I had no leftover veg.

Make sure it’s all warmed through thoroughly.

Grate a little cheese on top of the cranberry sauce.

Carefully spoon your creamy filling onto the pastry, on one side.

Fold the pastry over to cover the filling. Use a fork to create a seal around the edge. Pierce the top a few times to allow steam to escape.

I decorated mine with stars from the pastry scraps.

Spray with butter frylight or egg wash before baking in the oven for 25 minutes.

Yum!

I was slightly inspired by Jamie Oliver’s Hodge Podge Christmas Pie, I watched a video on his Instagram yesterday!

Here’s a link to that recipe:

Jamie Oliver’s Hodge Podge Pie

Let me know if you give this a go!

Enjoy 🍽

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas Day Twenty Five: Christmas Fun 🎄🎅🏻

The Big Day is finally here!

For the final day of Blogmas I thought I would share some of the Christmas fun we’ve been up to on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

Christmas Eve

Me and my sister continued our tradition of meeting up for a burger with our friend.

Obviously being 2020 we had to get it takeaway and outside 😷

So we incorporated a walk around the park and it was really nice (except the rain shower!!)

I had the Caffe Nero Mint Hot Choc finally, and it was so delicious and festive too

We also have a tradition of going around our local town to look at the christmad lights.

We keep an eye out in the weeks leading up to Christmas eve and there are a few that are always good too.

There were some brilliant lights on display this year.

Keepin’ it COVID secure by going in our separate cars and we just chatted over a voice call, worked pretty well 🤣

Left my Stocking out for Santa, obv!

Christmas Day

Me and Tim started the day with a delicious and festive nutella pastry Christmas tree & a cuppa!

Followed by present opening 🎁

My father in law provided a lovely Christmas lunch for us, we had my brother in law on Zoom, at the dinner table with us… very 2020!

We enjoyed a bit of a relax and a TV break before another family Zoom with a game of birds names.

We had the standard Christmas day buffet in the eve with the other half of our bubble, my twin sister, brother in law and nephews.

We had fun opening presents, had a bit of a dance and enjoyed some yummy food.

It’s been a strange one in the sense that we are all (hopefully) being more cautious than usual this year, but it has been fun to be able to keep some traditions alive and to get together, where possible, to celebrate

I really hope that you’ve all enjoyed your day 🎅🏻

Tier Four tomorrow! But we still have Boxing day Skype fun planned with a Christmas themed family quiz.

Stay safe and thankyou so much for joining me again for another fun, festive and unforgettable Blogmas.

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas Day Twenty Four: An Easy Christmas Day Dessert 🍫🥧🎄

ONE DAY TO GO!!

The penultimate post is here.

As I said a few days ago, I have one more recipe for you! And it’s perfect for a special Christmas day occasion.

It’s a delicious, and relatively easy and quick, Salted caramel (do I need to say any more?) and chocolate tart.

It doesn’t require a lot of ingredients which is great! And apart from time for it to set it doesn’t take too long either. It only took me an hour or so one evening so its great as a fancy, last minute showstopper.

Don’t let the making caramel stage scare you… it’s not as horrendous as you’d think and, if you have a food thermometer this will really come in handy.

I will link both of the recipes that I used below.

I used pre made shortcrust. Remember to bake it blind for 15 mins before removing the baking parchment and beans (or whatever you have, I used dried pasta) pop it back in until it starts to turn golden.

Chocolate Ganache

Caramel

I had some nice flakey salt that I added during the caramel recipe process (as stated but I doubled it) and I sprinkled more salt on, generously, once I had poured the caramel into my cooled tart.

Leave the caramel to set and then add your silky smooth ganache on top. Good quality Dark chocolate is the best.

As someone who likes baking, I enjoyed this recipe because it uses lots of different techniques that perhaps I wouldn’t bother to try usually.

And it looks impressive too!

This is going to be our Christmas day dessert, served with some thick double cream, YUM!

Give it a go!

It’s indulgent but you won’t regret it.

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas Day Twenty Three: Homemade Christmas Cards 🌲

Hi guys! 👋🏻

I’ll just leave this here, just because….

It has to be done, every year.

So, I do try and make my Christmas cards every year and I have done for over 10 years now (Sayyyyy whatt, madnesss)

This year, with all the craziness I almost didn’t… but then I thought, let’s just scale it back a little, keep them simple and I just do it for my fambizzle.

So thats what I did… if you are family and are reading this, maybe don’t or your card might be on here 🤣🤣

I still had loads of festive paper left over so I used that as the main design as they are pretty ones.

My calligraphy leaves much to be desired but, be won’t worry about that.

I really liked the simple effect of using the gift tags as part of the design.

I actually really enjoyed making these again. I have utilised Moonapig this year, in order to send cards all over the place, so it was actually really nice to be making them again!

Prehaps I’ll get ahead for next year whilst I’m enjoying it and have more time. It’s nice to do things when you have the time to enjoy it and it doesn’t become a chore.

Right, I’m off to organise our round for the Festive Boxing Day Quiz (2020 stylyyyy obv)

Happy Christmas Eve, Eve!

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas Day Twenty Two: Winter Walks 🌲

• 3 days to go! •

Autumn/Winter are my favourite months and I have really enjoyed my new found appreciation for walks, especially during these seasons.

So, thanks for that 2020 (because there isn’t alot else fo thank you for)

❄ Winter Walks ❄

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas Day Twenty One: Chocolate Orange Cookies 🍫🍊

Time for another baking post!

Especially because I feel like I haven’t done enough of these this Blogmas!

I do have another recipe up my sleeve, that I am hoping to make for our Christmas day dessert, so keep your eyes peeled for that one too 👀

Chocolate Orange is one of my absolute favourite flavours ever, but I also think its quite festive too.

I used a ‘Tasty’ recipe this time which I will leave a link for here

I obviously adapted it to make them Chocolate Orange flavoured.

I added some cocoa powder to make the cookie batter chocolatey, a little orange extract instead of vanilla and I used chopped up Chocolate Orange segments, instead of choc chips.

These don’t take long to make, honestly the longest part is refrigerating the mixture for a minimum of 30 mins before baking. They only take 15 mins in the oven.

This is how they turned out. The chocolate orange pieces were all gooey 😍

They are a lovely, soft cookie.

Let me know if you give them a go!

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas Day Twenty: The Christmas Panto 🎭

Well those 20 days have flown by!

Madness.

I hope everyone is doing ok here, in the UK, after the Corona announcements yesterday.

But, let’s try and enjoy what festivity we can, safely.

& one of the things we’ve still been able to enjoy is one of mine and my husbands favourite traditions…

The Christmas Panto!

This years panto, which we would usually watch at our local theatre, was offered as a live stream.

As you can see, this year it was their adaptation of ‘The Snow Queen’.

There were still a few people in the theatre (Covid regs in place) but we watched it on the live stream, from the comfort of our own home.

It was a blended panto, so that it worked for both the in house people and those watching at home, and honestly it was really impressive.

The way they incorporated the videos and video montages into the show as well as special effects onto the screen during certain moments was really impressive.

Considering you weren’t actually there it really was a lovely, intimate and immersive experience.

They also added interactivity to the show which was fun.

The troupe was made up of only 5 people, which is alot smaller than usual, but they did a fantastic job (as always) and they still played their instruments live, (always a favourite part of ours) They are all so talented.

It was great to see some of the familiar faces from pantos past.

And, it was as hilarious, fun and silly as always!

We thoroughly enjoyed the show! With snacks & drinks in hand.

I’m so glad we could still enjoy this tradition. Theatre is one of our absolute favourite pastimes, we love watching a show whether it be in a small theatre or in the West End.

It’s such a valuable and important part both of the entertainment branch and of our lives, and I for one hate to see it struggle.

We added a donation to our ticket cost to help support our local theatre.

I also donated to the Theatre Support fund. I’ve left a link below for you to check out how you can help, and the cool ‘The Show Must Go On’ merch that they have available.

Theatre Support Fund

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas Day Nineteen: Mince Pie taste testing 🥧

Only 6 days to go guys! Less than a week 🎄

During December, me and my friend at work have been trying out different mince pies. We work together two days so on a Monday I would bring one in and on a Thursday she would bring one in.

We got to try six different mince pies during this time, and we rated them to see which ones we preferred.

We tried the following Mince Pies:

  • Aldi Specially Selected
  • Gregg’s Bakery
  • Sainsburys Shortcrust Bakery
  • M&S Puff Pastry
  • Waitrose Extra Special
  • Co op Locally Sourced

• The Rankings •

We went for a few categories to score each mince pie on, these were:

  • Appearance
  • Overall Taste
  • Pastry
  • Fillage

And then we gave them an overall taste each.

• The Results •

Aldi Specially Selected

Appearence: 9/10 & 8/10

Overall taste: 7/10 & 7/10

Pastry: 7/10 & 7/10

Fillage: 8/10 & 7/10

Overall Rating: 7/10 & 7/10

Gregg’s

Appearance: 8/10 & 8/10

Overall taste: 5/10 & 7/10

Pastry: 6/10 & 7/10

Fillage: 8/10 & 7/10

Overall rating: 5/10 & 6/10

Sainsburys Bakery

Appearence: 8/10 & 8/10

Overall taste: 8/10 & 8/10

Pastry: 9/10 & 9/10

Fillage: 5/10 & 5/10

Overall rating: 8.5/10 & 9/10

M&S Puff Pastry

Appearence: 6/10 & 6/10

Overall taste: 6.5/10 & 8/10

Pastry: 5/10 & 3/10

Fillage: 3/10 & 3/10

Overall rating: 6/10 & 7/10

Waitrose

Appearence: 8/10 & 8/10

Overall taste: 9/10 & 6/10

Pastry: 8.5/10 & 8/10

Fillage: 8/10 & 8/10

Overall rating: 8/10 & 8/10

Co-op Locally Sourced

Appearence: 6/10 & 6/10

Overall taste: 10/10 & 10/10

Pastry: 8/10 & 9/10

Fillage: 10/10 & 9/10

Overall rating: 9.5/10 & 9/10

So, the winner of our taste testing was… (drum roll please)

The Co-op Locally Sourced !

These are my favourite and even with trying others that hasn’t changed, and my friend agreed too.

Which Mince pies are your favourite?

Have you tried any of these ones?

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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