Festive Greetings

Isn’t this a beautiful image? It’s by Kay Nielsen from the folk tale collection East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and I’ll be leaving it up over the rest of the week as a festive tribute while the doors of the reading room are closed for the vacation. I’ll be reading blogs, though, not least to catch up as I’m behind in my commenting! The rest of the time, well, will go on preparations, the usual as well as some unusual ones.  My son has had a vision, and it’s of a house made out of cake, so you can imagine us trying to construct that over the next few days. So far we have four big building blocks in the shape of square sponge cakes which in half an hour or so we will stick together with frosting. Then we’re going to try to construct the underpinning for a roof with broken up sponge and sponge fingers (that’s ladyfingers to some of you). And then we have a lot of fondant icing…. If it’s anything in the least like a house by the end, I’ll put a photo up here.  Hope you all have a wonderful week, however or whatever you are celebrating, and may many of the presents you unwrap be book-shaped!