Do you love a gift guide around Christmas? I do! This one is all from Etsy and is perfect for the book lovers in your life. Literary prints, mugs and candles are all available.
Introducing the December Pick(s) for the A Bookish Baker Book Club
One of the great benefits of having a casual book club on Instagram is that you can make up the rules as you go along. So instead of having one book for the December book pick - you can have two.
Yes, it’s greedy. But it is Christmas in a few weeks.
To find out what the two book choices are for December then read the post here:
Five cosy Christmas crime novels
New video upload about five brilliant cosy crime novels to read over the Christmas period.
I love to hibernate over the holiday season with a cosy crime novel or two whilst sipping hot chocolate in front of a fire. The weather outside may be frightful but inside I'm in heaven.
Books mentioned:
The Santa Klaus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay https://amzn.to/2R16v4V
Murder at the Old Vicarage by Jill McGown https://amzn.to/2S8KzVP
A Christmas Party by Georgette Heyer https://amzn.to/2S47bqj
Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie https://amzn.to/2zlyLZ9
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding by Agatha Christie https://amzn.to/2OWFoGg
(Links are affiliate links at no cost to yourself).
You might also enjoy:
Five Beautiful Christmas Books
Mother in law's chicken broth
This could also have been called grandpa’s chicken broth (after my mother in law’s father) but it’s something I always associate with my husband’s mum so that’s what I’m calling it.
My son has been really sick. He went off to foreign climes on a school trip a month ago and ate something dodgy. The result was severe food poisoning that actually turned into something else and meant he was poorly for a couple of weeks on his return; long after the poisoning had left his body. He couldn’t keep any food down whatsoever and had lost a lot of weight.
The mother in law arrived last week for a few days. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said to my small boy (he’s six foot three and plays in the front row in rugby but obviously he’s still my little toddler), ‘grandma’s here’. A few hours later she had made him this broth and it was the tastiest thing he’d had in weeks. And it smelled delicious. Warm on his tummy yet gentle and because it was just liquid it meant, because he could keep water down, there was no chance of it returning some time later.
It also had so many nutrients in it. Something he had been severely lacking for too long and meant he wasn’t getting any goodness inside him to fight off the beasties. It fed his body but it also made him feel cosy, looked after and warm.
This recipe makes enough for about four cups of broth. What we also did once he’d drunk the broth and could stomach actual food, was to take the chicken off the bone and to blend it with some boiled water with the vegetables for a nutritious, thick soup.
Recipe for mother-in-law’s chicken broth
Ingredients
3 chicken thighs, skin and bone on
1 large carrot
1 leek
half an onion
1 stick celery
one third of a chicken stock cube
boiling water to just cover the chicken
salt and pepper
Method
Place all the ingredients in a small casserole dish or a saucepan. Add a little salt and pepper and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for an hour. Serve the liquid in a mug.
You could also add a little rice to the broth.
How to make a Christmas Pudding
How I felt writing my first essay for Patreon
Welcome Home Smartie Cookies
Right now my kitchen is warm and has that beautifully welcoming and homely smell of vanilla and coffee. The scent of the vanilla is sweet. It reminds me of buttercreams, of sponges and syrups. It reminds me of our old house. The house we lived for nine years, where I discovered the joy of writing and flirted with a cake-making business. For a while I was torn between the two as I only had limited time and the baking often edged ahead.
Read more and see the recipe…
PLAN WITH ME | November 2018 | Planning for writing, creativity & productivity
During September and October my writing & creativity productivity increased despite having a new puppy to tame. My blog stats doubled and I started a number of projects including my YouTube channel.
However, whilst writing a round up of how my writing projects had gone during the month of October I realised that I still hadn't got over the fear when it came to writing my essays and my novel. My head was full of ideas, sentences, projects so I decided to do a brain dump/mind map of everything that was in my head to do with YouTube, my essay on creative confidence (that I send out via Patreon) and my novel. This mind map then led to me writing the specific details of each task in my notebook.
As with my video on Planning My Writing Month it was an incredibly simple task - but also effective. Just this week I have crossed off a number of items off my list including the feared essay!
Watch the video for more…
Cosy Autumnal Purchases
One thing I don’t tend to do on my blog is to list my recent purchases unless they’re book (or desk) related. The reason being, I don’t buy that much for myself or the house. We have towels in the airing cupboard that we’ve had longer than the children and I often go barefoot or just wear socks instead of using slippers.
However, the contrast between then summer heat and the cooler autumn months is making an impact on me. I need cosy. I need comfort. And I need a hand-towel that doesn’t look threadbare and stained no matter how hot we wash it.
Continue >>>
My writing month October 2018
It’s a real cliche but October went by fast. It was the month of my birthday, the month where the early morning starts with the puppy started to take its toll and the month of half term.
Which is my way of leading up to the fact that October didn’t go as well for me as I’d hoped on the writing front. I suppose this is unsurprising when I think of everything I achieved in September. You cannot keep going at full throttle; at some point you have to slow down and sort the house, spend time with your family and clean out the chicken houses!
Read more about my writing month of October…
A WRITER'S OFFICE TOUR: How I've decluttered my office for a more productive space
A few days ago, unable to write because of a head cold and feeling a bit blue because my son had just left on a trip to Asia, I decided to sort out and declutter my office. This was a well overdue project and I shared the process on my Instagram Stories.
I received so many lovely messages about the process that I decided to do a video of the finished result.
You can see the cleaning and sorting process on my Instagram, abookishbaker, in the saved Story called 'Office Hinch' (after the cleaning sensation that is Mrs Hinch of course!)
And now here’s the video:
