It's my party and.... you know how it goes

I think I've already said this, but I'm cooking goose for Christmas dinner this year and it's richness means that it doesn't need all the fatty trimmings, so I decided to have some friends over, as an excuse for making pigs in blankets and devils on horseback!

 I wore... you guessed it, VELVET! I've had this dress (size 22) for a while and was saving it for my party.

I've had this New Look head band fascinator for years, and it matched the dress perfectly!

 I decked the halls......

 And stepped into Christmas! I highly recommend Nigella's Christmas rocky road, it is damned delicious! I did half the amount of cherries and added dried apricots (cause I had some in the cupboard!). You have to have smoked salmon don't you? We had already been munching on the pigs in blankets (with cranberry sauce) and the devils on horseback (with bread sauce) so they were a bit depleted when I took this picture!

I did cheese and pickle sausage rolls (cause I love them!), devilled eggs ('cause I LOVE THEM!) Pea / tomato & avocado bruschettas because I felt we needed some vegetables to sustain us! Plus some prawn cocktails ('cause they remind both me and my boyfriend of our mums starters before Christmas lunch!). I generally like to have blue cheese at Christmas, and although Stilton (in my opinion) is over-rated and I would have liked Cornish blue, I needed Stilton for the devils on horseback (it holds its form when cooked better than sticky blues) so Stilton it was.... taste the difference Tuxford and Tebbutt to be precise, which is certainly one of the nicest Stiltons I've had in ages. I didn't make the mini stollen or brandy butter, but my god the two of them together is a thing of beauty... if you have a sweet tooth and you've never tried this combo then you must!

I was a bit sad to find that the dress dyed my skin black, but as I got it via ebay for cheap I'm not going to get pissy about it!

You can get this dress from Crazy Clearance here - please note that it originally had beading on the neck (which I pretty much always think makes dresses look either tacky or old fashioned) that I diligently removed. It took me ages because unlike most beading I've come across which is just sewn on through holes in the beads this was properly attached to the dress. Worth it in the end, I much prefer it beadless, much more funky!