The Queen sang the first verse of a carol at our candlelit service tonight. I hope you enjoy her singing. Thankfully I managed to edit out the second verse which had her mother joining in.

Incidentally, how does anyone record decent videos in the dark? I couldn’t see a thing through the viewfinder, so apologies for the shocking camera angles and especially for chopping her head off for half the recording.

I saw this for the first time today and thought it might bring some cheer as you contemplate the shopping/baking/wrapping/tidying/sermon prep or whatever it is that looms large in your house at the moment.

Pooching about on Youtube I see that there are other versions of this which start right at the beginning but this one seems the most fun somehow.

This Thursday evening we are hosting the staff and governors of our church school here at the Vicarage for ‘mulled wine and mince pies’. That’s what our invite said, anyway. But as many of the staff have to drive home, we will also be serving a wonderful non-alcoholic alternative, given to me by another Vicar’s-wife-in-training, when the Vicar was at theological college. Her original name for it was spiced cider, but that is not very helpful, as it really is non-alcoholic, so I’ve renamed it Spiced Cranapple. It is mulled winey in flavour and not too sweet, as some non-alcoholic punches can be. Serve it at your carol service or at the Vicarage and enjoy!

Enjoy the warmth

Ingredients
1l cranberry juice
1l apple juice
250ml (1 cup) orange juice
5 cloves
3-4 cinnamon sticks
2 tbspns sugar
1 orange, halved and sliced into rounds

Combine all the ingredients, bring to the boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes to allow spices to infuse. Can also bring to boil and transfer straight to thermos pots and leave to infuse that way for church events (and keep leftovers warm for Vicarage use the rest of the week…mmmmm).

Anyway. Best get on with the pastry now. Not sure how many mince pies I’ll need for Thursday but I definitely need to start making them today.

No, this isn’t a review of the new movie, released in the UK today. The film has had a pretty mixed reaction and took a good while to reach this country after its US release. So I reckon you’re far better off just watching the Joker reciting the whole of the book, with dramatic actions (I particularly like ‘rolled their terrible eyes’) and a wavering Black Country accent. Some of you may have seen this before (all good bloggers recycle material, don’t they?).

Last night I suddenly realised that today would be 1st December and I was rather unprepared. So the Queen and I had to delve into our cellar to retrieve an old Celebrations chocolate tin and stomp about the garden for a good twig. Then we had to track down a suitable buckety receptacle and scrabble in our gravel to fill said receptacle. Yes, it’s Jesse Tree time in the Vicarage.

A smart and organised Jesse Tree

If you’re not familiar with the Jesse Tree tradition, I’d like to heartily commend it as a great way to keep Advent Christ centred. A good Advent calendar with bible verses is a start, but using a Jesse Tree helps us to focus as a family on the coming of the King. The tradition is to hang an ornament on our bare twig every day of Advent and have a bible reading and questions about bible passages which point to the coming of Christ. The ornament reminds us of the bible passage or a person who heralded Christ in the Old Testament. A Jesse Tree is a visual bible overview and helps us all to remember God’s great plan of salvation which led to the birth of Jesus.

Originally I used an activity book which had suggested readings and ideas for making the symbols to hang on the tree for each of the 25 days of December leading up to Christmas Day. Then I also read about the Jesse Tree in the excellent book by Kent and Barbara Hughes ‘Disciplines of a Godly Family’. And if you Google ‘Jesse Tree’ you can find a huge variety of suggestions for how to make your tree and which bible readings and symbols to use. We made our decorations over a couple of years. When the kids were very young, we only had about half of them. I fondly remember a wet weekend the first Christmas of the Vicar’s curacy when my parents joined in construction of the missing ornaments in our steamy kitchen. We also have a few ready made decorations in the tin. The simplest option is to find some images to print out, and use blutack to fix your symbols to a picture of a tree. An American magazine seems to have done this.

In the end I ended up compiling our own Jesse tree list and readings, with symbols, readings and suggested questions. I also listed out the single verse readings on a sheet of paper using the NIrV, but I’ll not post that because I suspect I might be breaching copywrite. Last year the Queen and the Joker were able to take turns in reading from the sheet of verses. This year I’m intending to get the kids to find the bible passages in their bibles (International Children’s Bible for the Joker, NIV for the Queen) and then read. The Engineer might even be able to read out a few. If not, he can read out the questions.

It’s not too late to join us in making a Jesse Tree this Advent. Or keep it up your sleeve for next year. And just for you, dear readers, here is a sneak preview of this year’s Vicarage Jesse Tree. The eagle eyed among you will spot a few doubles (spreading around the hanging-up-the-ornament joy), a triple and the absence of David’s sling. I’m sure I’ve seen it since we moved but it may take some tracking down. Or we could make a new one. In fact, maybe we should ensure that each child has a complete set to take with them when they leave home. I foresee a project for coming Advents…

If I spot a twiggier branch tomorrow I might make a swap

I love food. You may not have noticed, but cooking is one of my passions. We have a friend who says that everyone should have a hobby that they could practice wherever they lived and whatever their age. His is fishing. The Vicar’s is photography (and golf I guess) and mine is completely definitely and utterly cooking (and eating).

Anyway, living in our multicultural neighbourhood has pros and cons for the practise of my hobby. The many positives include:

• A vast selection of spices available in bulk at the local corner shop
• A fab butcher (for chicken, lamb, mutton and fish only) who will chop my meat as I want it for no extra cost
• Cheap cheap cheap onions (in 10kg bags), garlic, fresh ginger and coriander. And milk.
• Exotic fruit and veg available too (big boxes of mangos are a fave)
• Cookery advice from local friends of all cultures

Mine didn't look as fancy as this

On the minus side, yesterday I was in search of couscous. I’d bought my ‘chopped for curry’ chicken on the bone and was looking forward to cooking a Moroccan tagine. But not enough couscous was available in the Vicarage pantry and I didn’t want to trek into town. It’s not like couscous is a matter of life or death or anything. It’s just right with tagine.

So I tried our local Indian supermarket. Because it’s a multicultural area I sort of expect all sorts of interesting foodstuffs to be available easily. But there was no couscous. Not much call for it in our neck of the woods. We have Punjabis, Pakistanis, Kenyans, Jamaicans, Somalis and Polish folk plus many others. But not enough North Africans for the right selection at the shops yet. And they don’t stock parsley either, so if I’m making tabouleh or kedgeree I have to think ahead a bit. Oh the trials.

Maybe it’s not multicultural enough here.

It was a very sluggish morning in the Vicarage today. But I cheered everyone up over the porridge by wearing my Plain Lazy t-shirt, summing up the Monday morning mood. It has the ‘Plain Lazy’ logo and a cartoon of a man under his duvet on the front. Just where we all wanted to be.

I was delighted to find their comprehensive website later. I have been tempted by many items and shall definitely be purchasing this t-shirt for the Queen for Christmas:

An ideal garment for the Queen (just wish it came in my size)

And for the Joker I’m planning to get this one:

Getting started is definitely the hardest thing

The Engineer inherited some bouncy Tigger genes from the Vicar and is a much better riser. I’ll have to find a Hi Energy t-shirt website for him I think.

Last weekend I met up with some old friends. I see this group of Christian girls twice a year, as we’ve done for more than 15 years. We pray for one another through the year and meet for encouragement, to study the bible and eat fabulous food.

This Saturday we’d agreed to read Richard Coekin’s new book ‘Our Father – Enjoying God in Prayer’. What a tonic.

Richard Coekin describes himself in this book as an activist who struggles to pray. I could relate to this very well. I’m a massive extrovert who finds the discipline of prayer a daily battle. But Coekin’s book doesn’t send the activist on a guilt trip. As we discussed it on Saturday, we agreed that we’d not felt beaten over the head about our lack of prayer, but that prayer was in fact possible. And not just in special ‘quiet times’ but throughout the day. We each felt that we could pray more – that it wasn’t as hard as we thought.

One helpful feature of the book is a rather cheesy story at the end of each chapter. The stories fit together as a whole, telling a tale of the prayer lives of different characters. I particularly liked the way one girl’s prayers were written out including lots of ‘ers’. My prayers are far from coherent, so this seemed very realistic.

The book unpacks each of the sections of the Lord’s Prayer and just helps you to think how you could pray that more thoroughly. Since this weekend I’ve been praying this way not only myself, but also with the kids (who are 8, 6 and 4) after their bible time.

With the kids I’ve offered options, so that they feel like they have some choice in the way they pray. The current options are the Lord’s Prayer (unpacked for the big two, but straight for the Engineer) or the five finger prayer. If you’ve not heard of it, the five finger prayer is where we pray

1. Thumb – for those closest to us (family, friends)
2. Forefinger – for those who point us to Christ (church leaders, Sunday school teachers)
3. Middle finger – for those in authority (government, teachers)
4. Ring finger – for those who are weak (the ill and sad)
5. Little finger – little me

Actually, we’ve slightly adapted this five finger prayer to pray about the Lord, who’s first, as well as those close to us, as we pray the thumb prayer.

This has been a good week for prayer in the Vicarage. How do you pray with your kids?

After the guest list, next up for consideration for the Vicarage Sunday lunch is the menu. Our Sunday lunches have a few criteria to meet:

• Cheap, otherwise the Vicar’s stipend would be sorely stretched. This means fancy organic meat and any red meat not on special offer is usually off the menu.
• Acceptable for consumption by all the guests. This is why I tend to stick to pretty traditional roasts. We don’t live in an area where we can cook our beef raw or serve the lamb with a fancy salsa verde. And since I cooked roast pork for some dear friends in our last parish and only discovered on serving that one of them couldn’t abide it, I ALWAYS check whether there is anything that people won’t consume. I’ve been surprised by people’s dietary restrictions.
• Possible to cook on the oven timer, or otherwise be worked around our absence at church between about 10.00am and 12.30pm. And we want to eat by 2.30pm at the latest, otherwise the Vicar has indigestion at the Evening Service and the children have consumed so many snacks that they don’t eat the lovely meal I’ve just slaved over.
• I like if possible to make desserts the day before, or have a dessert that’s really speedy to make on a Sunday. There’s enough stress in the Vicarage on a Sunday morning without having to whip cream.
• A few good leftovers always makes a good meal perfect.

Last night the kids were having fun in the living room. There was much screaming, a few tears and, when I went through to chase them all to bed, a scattering of polystyrene balls that had escaped from our very cheap fluffy Netto beanbag. I like the beanbag. If I sit on it I can cuddle up close to the fire and keep my back supported. And the Joker likes to stroke the fluffy material and suck his thumb when he’s tired. But the escaping balls are a total pain. The first escape occurred after some vigorous jumping by the tribe, and since then the bag has leaked regularly. Those little balls cling to everything and travel round the house, cheekily pointing out my lack of attention to housework.

When I twittered my distress this evening one tweetpal suggested ‘vigorously brushing your hair and then gently sweeping floor with head & the static will attract balls like magnet’. Since I did not have a plan for transferring the balls from my hair to an appropriate receptacle, I instead went and fetched Henry, who sorted everything out. Henry is my wonderful Numatic vacuum cleaner. Now, I know it’s a bit sad to enthuse about a hoover, but I hate housework. And Henry has made vacuuming almost a pleasure.

Mine is a lot dustier than this

There is a good deal of surface area that needs regular hoovering here in the Vicarage. I find that mess and dirt always expand to fill the space available and we’re certainly blessed with space and have risen to the challenge of expanding our mess and dirt. At the moment leaves blow into the hallway every time we open the front door. And we have inherited dark carpets in the hall, stairs and landing, which don’t show mud too much but do highlight every piece of fluff that the kids drop from their pockets.

But Henry is light so I can lift him around, he’s quiet so I can still listen to Radio 4 or the new Sovereign Grace cd as I trundle him about, and he has a cord and hose so long that I can clean the whole of the downstairs of the house and all the way up the stairs without having to unplug him from the socket in the hall. His eyes and smile are a bit cheesy, but looks aren’t everything you know.

He’s not a cheap vacuum cleaner – he cost about £100, but he’s made it possible for me to keep the Vicarage looking almost respectable. So I love him and will continue to recommend him as the perfect Vicarage vacuum to anyone who’ll listen.

In the meantime, does anyone know where to source replacement inner liners for beanbags?