The Laboratory

It's time to start listening to Christmas music. Having now lost Harkageddon! six times due to choir rehearsals, let's go for something a bit more contemporary. Growing up, the US Christian singer-songwriter Amy Grant was always a favourite for her catchy tunes. Here's her first Christmas album, "A Christmas Album". What a great jumper. If we'd had time this year, the Creen Christmas card would have been a recreation of this with both of us. You'll just have to imagine. Her run of Christmas albums then included "Home For Christmas", "The Animals' Christmas", "Home For Christmas", "A Christmas To Remember", "Tennessee Christmas", "Christmas Memories", "Icon Christmas", "A Very Amy Christmas", "Grant Us All Thy Christmases", "Yet Another Amy Grant Christmas Album", "The Christmas Collection", ... Not all of those are real. But she has had more Ch...

We hope you've already done something to get into the Christmas spirit! Maybe you've bought your Christmas stamps, or got the giant inflatable snowman out of the loft ready to put up this weekend. We decided to visit the opening night of the Brussels Christmas Market - spread over the whole of the city centre, from the Bourse to the Grand Place to St Catherine's Place. It was a marvellous 24 hours with surprise Canadian dancing (and bison), eating all our Belgian favourites, and looking at fantastic lights and decorations. And it's not long until we visit the Finnish Christmas market in East London - stay tuned!

 Thanks to Adam's Dad, who has sent one of his "legendary" quizzes. Every answer is a word that can follow "Christmas ..." but be warned, some are harder than others!  1. Jack of Clubs. (4)  2. Talent. (4)  3. Applaud. (5)  4. Eastern Country. (6)  5. Here and Now. (7)  6. Lean. (4)  7. Rhode or Rhodes. (6)  8. Medals. (11)  9. Ghost. (6) 10. Early Part of Evening. (3) 11. Shawl or Sandwich. (4) 12. Ash. (4) 13. Daniel’s Middle Name. (3) 14. Period Sounds Puny. (4) 15. Impressions. (6) 16. Political Organisation. (5) 17. Silent Anagram. (6) 18. Space in Schedule. (6) 19. Offal. (6) 20. Crispy Biscuits. (7) 21. Spar. (3) 22. Kangaroo. (6) 23. Solidify. (4) 24. Madonna Song. (7) 25. Cheat, Copy or Prompt. (4) 26. Narrative. (5) 27. Club for Fertile Females. (7) 28. Cate Blanchett Film. (5) 29. Spring. (6) 30. Impede. (6)

With only 2 weeks to go until the 2017 Advent Calendar, I thought it would be nice to share about some of our Christmas preparations. With all of the shops helping us get ready, today was the first of the big trips to buy Christmas food . Here are our annual must-haves: 1) Mince pies Must be topped with icing, and not those mini ones either. I suppose puff pastry all over is OK, and those frangipane ones are nice too, but iced topped mince pies are the Christmas equivalent of cherry bakewells. 2) Zum Fest You have to get in a decent box of biscuits, and you can't do better than Bahlsen ones from Germany. Zum Fest have chocolates, biscuits, and lebkuchen. Second best are the lebkuchen from Sainsburys, as they have lovely apricot filling (the same jam that holds a decent battenburg together). Plain gingerbread is not as good. 3) Treeslets The best cheesy biscuits. They are like Cheeselets but in the shape of trees. 4) Ricciarelli These almond cakes were our go-to gift ...

Have you chosen what you are going to wear on Christmas Day yet? There seems to be a trend this year for taking traditional Christmas jumper patterns and putting them on all sorts of things. So if you are getting a new bike for Christmas, why not try this: on sale at RedBear To add a touch of festive flair, why not wear: available from Shinesty And to help make your baby part of the decorations, knit them this: pattern at Crochetville Thanks to Miriam & Peter for the suggestion!

Happy Christmas from Sarah & Adam Thanks for your encouragement and support Wishing you all the best for 2014

Anniversary Flashback: 2007 Looking around it's hard to believe how much fashion has changed. Back in 2007 we posted this... Novelty Christmas jumpers were just that, a novelty, and yet in 2013 you can buy them in Sainsburys' Texco, everywhere! Sarah's work party even had a Christmas jumper theme, and 4 women turned up in the same Primark jumper! I don't know if it's anything to do with Sarah Lund's jumper from The Killing  (previously featured in the Advent Calendar as a teacosy design) but the patterns are now appearing everywhere: To see all of the pictures from 2007, download the file:  2007pictures.zip Bonus beats: from  @jennyleppard 's Twitter feed - coffee cups at our favourite London café, Scandinavian Kitchen  @scanditwitchen :

A Christmas quiz: fast forward to the time shown, play the video for 15 seconds, then pause it and say what happened next! Shakin Stevens "Merry Christmas Everyone" 1) from 2:23 to 2:38 2) from 2:48 to 3:03 Whigfield "Last Christmas" 3) from 1:25 to 1:40 Mariachi Doritos "Stay Another Day" 4) from 1:55 to 2:10 Sir Clifford of Richard "Saviour's Day" 5) from 2:35 to 2:50

Happy Christmas from Sarah and Adam! No, don't be silly, that's not us, that's Kristin and Haakon, the mascots from the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics in Norway. We're really looking forward to the Olympics next year, as you can probably tell, and hope you are too. Until then, we wish all of our readers a very happy Christmas and New Year, and hope you get presents/snow/chocolate/peace (delete as appropriate)! PS don't forget to enter the competition on 21st December - we have lots of prizes to be won!

Happy Christmas! love from Adam & Sarah