Dressed to impress!

Yesterday I'd taken all the decorations down from their storage place in the wardrobes in our bedroom and today I made a start on putting up our Christmas trees.

I was determined to put our large white tree in the living room as it would look beautiful with the new grey colour scheme, but it meant I had to re-arrange the furniture! Keith let me get on with it and I moved one of the armchairs into the window alcove thus freeing up a space in the corner of the room. He helped me put up the tree and we put the lights on so that Sophie could decorate it tomorrow and I gave the room a good clean.

I arranged our little gonks on the table by the television and put the lights that were on the mantlepiece on the windowsill instead. It all looked really cosy, especially when we lost the light at about 3.30pm.

Keith went off to his weekly football match and Mike went to stay with a friend so it was lovely to curl up on the sofa and catch up with one of my recorded programmes. When Keith came home I had a shower and then it was time to collect Sophie from work.

This evening I asked her to do my hair and make-up as it was our last Come Dine With Me of the year and we had been asked to "Dress to Impress"! I wore my black all-in-one outfit, Sue's borrowed jewellery and a cat ears tiara given to me by Sophie. We took a (not very clear!) selfie...

Keith drove me to Lynda's house and Andrea and Fiona were there already, looking very glamourous as well!

We had Prosecco with raspberries as an aperitif served with little blinis with smoked salmon and caviar and then we went through to the dining room for our meal.

Lynda had prepared prawns and smoked salmon in a filo nest to start served with more Prosecco and cranberry bread.

For the main course we had half a duck with orange sauce and a variety of vegetables such as carrots, broccoli, mashed potatoes and horseradish and cauliflower with shallots. Lynda tried to get us to play the appallingly un-pc game of Cards Against Humanity but Fiona and I weren't that keen so we settled for a good chat instead! A much better idea!

Dessert was chocolate trifle with jellied pineapple and raspberries in jelly served with a particularly good thick Brandy cream.

We did the scoring at the end of the meal and Andrea won (for the second time) while I came second. Lynda and Fiona were joint third. Lynda was already talking about next year but I feel that the theme has run its course and it was quite hard work having four meals spread over a few weeks! I would much rather have one lovely meal near Christmas but I'm not sure my idea will go down well with the others!