New year, new recipes

**Update: healthy carrot cake good, stuffed squash postponed, mushroom casserole bad (although that might have been my playing about with the recipe!)**

I tend not to bother with new year’s resolutions as I find they lead more to guilt than growth, but I have spent a happy afternoon pottering around on the internet looking for new recipes to try, as well as new projects to inspire me to develop my crafty side in the coming year.

This week we’re going to be eating mushroom casserole, because mushrooms are amazing:

and stilton and leek bread and butter bake, to use up leftover stilton and feed my new found love of leeks:

also baked ham, cheddar and leek squashes, because of the aforementioned love of leeks, and well documented love of squash, and the general fun and exciting element of such a dish (don’t they look fabulous?!):

I’m toying with the idea of this mulled mixed berry terrine, because it’s so pretty and festive and really, any posh dessert involving jelly gets my vote, but I’ll have to come up with something to use instead of the wine because my parents aren’t big wine fans and they’re the ones coming for dinner!

I’ve also just made this healthy carrot cake to help use up the plethora of carrots left over from Christmas (I got a bit carried away with a two for one offer so bought FAR too many!) but I’ve not tasted it yet so am not sure what it’s like.  I will, of course, feed back if any of these experiments turn out particuarly well (or poorly).

As for crafty inspiration, there are two projects I’m already thinking about for next Christmas:  a beautiful felt advent calendar like this one:

Isn’t it great?  Each pocket contains a little felt decoration to hang on the tree; it’s well worth looking through the other posts to see the beautiful decorations.  I’ve been fancying a homemade advent calendar with pockets for each day for a few years now, but have never quite managed to work out what would go in the pockets until I saw this one; now I can’t wait to get started!

I’m also loving these fab little ‘Octophrost’ decorations, I think they’ll go nicely with my festive owls!

Happy New Year everyone!