I was up early this morning and went out at 7.30am to try and take some photos of the sunrise and the frosty landscape. I drove up to a bridle path not far away and took out my camera only to find that it told me I needed to change the batteries! As I'd only just changed them (when I took some photos of our building at work before the cladding started) I was a bit annoyed and suspect there may be something wrong with it. Just another in a long line of machines turning on us!

Luckily I had my camera phone with me and I took a couple with that, although I can't say I'm blown away by them...

 
I gained more pleasure from being out in the frosty morning air and seeing the colours of the sky change from pink to blue, with the clouds on the western horizon turn a gorgeous peachy hue. I stopped by a field of sheep who looked at me with hope in their eyes thinking I was going to produce some food for them and tried to take a lovely rustic picture of them against the white fields but it didn't work. Next time, maybe, with perhaps a field of snow.

Back home Keith made bacon sandwiches for breakfast and then I started packing for the holiday. It's a job I don't look forward to but time is running out fast and I can't leave it until next week. We took Sophie to work and then drove over to Wellingborough to find out the venue for a Birthday party Mikey is going to tomorrow. We took Gladys with us and she took us straight to the door so that was great as we'd never have found the place otherwise!

In the afternoon I actually did some baking! And managed to follow a recipe! Waitrose had sent me a little booklet promoting their Chrismas goodies and a recipe for Cranberry and Mincemeat Eve's Pudding had caught my eye. It looked delicious and I'd already bought all the ingedients (from Tesco, though, not Waitrose!) so I spent a very pleasant half hour making it and filling the house with delicious smells. It was described as an alternative to Christmas pudding and it would certainly do the job very well. It turned out to be delicious and we ate it after dinner with some cream. Yum!