Father Christmas comes to Invergarry Lodge

Well it's been a busy week up at Invergarry Lodge. Matt has been down to Yorkshire on a work trip, and finally made it home on Tuesday despite numerous problems with snow and ice at Inverness airport. We have taken Dylan to his final puppy class of the year where he was awarded his rosette and certificate for passing the 'puppy foundation assessment', which came as a nice surprise to all of us! It was the Christmas bash so we all had lots of fun with 'pass-the-bonio-filled-parcel' and 'musical dogs', all washed down with our first mince pies of the year, which went down extremely well.

We've got lots of great snow on the hills up here, in fact the Nevis Range may even open for skiing this weekend if there is enough on Aonach Mor (see www.nevisrange.co.uk to find out the latest information). Yesterday we decided to head down past Roy Bridge to do a short walk at the bottom of Creag Meagaidh. The snow down there was amazingly dry, so that you could see every single crystal, and really powdery. Despite numerous attempts at making snowballs, it just wouldn't work so we gave up and concentrated instead on throwing it all over Dylan the dog, which he seemed to find quite amusing.

The festive season seems to have crept up on us this year, so I am now making up for lost time by throwing myself into Christmas crafts galore! Last night I went along to a workshop for making cake decorations, and came back proudly showing off my very own Father Christmas creation. I won't give up the day job but it wasn't too bad for a first attempt:

Luckily I also won a snowman version in the raffle afterwards, made by Helen who is a professional cake-topper creator (see her wedding cake topper creations at caketops.co.uk) which will take pride of place on the Christmas cake my mum is bringing up here for Christmas.

And to cement my festive spirit, I'm staying in today making Christmas tree decorations from sparkly felt... and I might even treat myself to a mince pie while I'm at it!

Jen x