Christmas was such a whirlwind, the last two weeks are just a blur.  It was a madhouse, but not solely due to the time of year.  The volume of mail and parcels we helped deliver was incredible, which kept us more than busy, but added onto that was the work of moving into a lovely little house just down the street.  I noticed it was vacant two Saturdays before Christmas, picked up the keys four days later and managed to have nearly everything shifted the next weekend.  My brother and a mate did all the heavy lifting, which was so good of them, and now I'm settled in for at least 6 months.  More about that later.

DD Seonaid showed up last Thursday, with most of her wordly goods packed into her friend's ute, and everything was unloaded into her room; she's finished her job at Parachilna, and is going to live in Adelaide for a while, with her cousin John.  I really can't remember what we did next; I know there was shopping for last minute things,  and dinner at the brother's place, but none of it has been written to the memory banks.

We had Christmas here, lunch with the Doug and Bev, which lasted till three o'clock, very leisurely, then it was home to pack, for a quick trip to Adelaide to spend Boxing Day with John and Liz.  Liz cooked an honest-to-goodness turkey, which was quite unusual for us.  We have prepared turkey breast roasts every Christmas, but we've never had a whole bird before.  And I'm not sure I ever would go to the trouble myself, no matter how nice it is.

After lunch we went for a walk on Henley Beach, and had a cup of coffee right on the beach front.  It was a lovely bright sunny day, but very windy, as you can tell from Seonaid's hair.

I guess the seagulls did well out of the Christmas parties on the beach.  There were plenty of them around.

Back home again on Tuesday, and Seonaid proceeded to cook up a storm, making multiple batches of gingerbread cookies.  These cookies are her alltime favourites; we had  a huge collection of cookie cutters when she was little, and I used to make the dough and let her and her brother loose to cut out all the shapes.

This is a cookie cutter roller that Mereth found in an op-shop many years ago.  It made heaps of cookies very quickly, but I think I prefer the individual cutters.

This time we decided to ice them, so I googled Royal Icing, and away we went.  It was so much fun, not too much mess to clean up afterwards, thanks to a tip I read somewhere.  If you pile the icing into a piece of gladwrap and roll it into a tube, the whole thing can be put in the icing bag.  Pull the end of the glad wrap through the hole in the piping bag, snip off the excess and it's ready to go.  If there's icing leftover, just store the gladwrap tubes in the fridge.  It was so easy!  We didn't even need to wash the piping bag with this method.

The camels are my favourite.

This is getting too long, and I have to get round to Doug and Bev's for New Years Eve drinkies, so I will finish this later on.  I can't believe all the activity I've managed to cram into the last three weeks; small wonder I need a rest!