Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Frilly tea and festive things

If I've been a little quiet on the blog front, you can blame the silly season. Being someone who tends to be rather into the whole Christmas thing, I've been having a wonderful time doing all things festive, including baking up a storm.

Today was the last day of school for the little folk, and to celebrate the occassion I invited a number of the school mums here for a frilly afternoon tea, with the bone china teacups and pretty plates and serviettes. I made mini almond and pecan nut pies, Christmas mince pies and a chocolate Florentine slice, and the mums brought some delectable treats with them and we had a wonderful afternoon playing ladies before we all trooped down to the school and picked up the kids for the holidays.

Today was also my last book review time on Dunedin Channel 9 television's Dunedin Diary show. I got to choose my Christmas picks for the year.

As I said on the show, 2009 and has been a great year for Otago writers, with plenty of fabulous books being produced by the locals. I chose four local books which had come out recently that I thought anyone would be delighted to find under the tree on Christmas morning.


Children's book:

The Word Witch, by Margaret Mahy and illustrated by local boy David Elliot.





Non-fiction Book:

Glory Days by Dr Glam aka Ian Chapman - A great look at the glorious 1970's



Pictorial book:

Big Weather South by Dave Cull and photography by the Otago Daily Times. A graphic description of some of the, er, interesting weather we get down here in the south.


Fiction:

Banquo's Son by Tania Roxborogh. A gripping sequel to Shakespeare's Macbeth

3 comments:

Tania Roxborogh said...

Why thank you, Vanda.

Kiwicraig said...

There was this CONTAINMENT book from an Otago writer that was pretty damned good too, from memory. :-)

Have a very merry Xmas Vanda!

Dorte H said...

"a frilly afternoon tea, with the bone china teacups and pretty plates and serviettes" - oh, this sounds cosy and Christmassy. I will try to remember the bone china teacups for a cosy flash fiction piece :D

In this house we are surrounded by spruce and candles so all we need is a bit of snow (instead of this horrid cold).