The end is nigh!

I can't belove it's the last day of my 30 day NaBloPoMo challenge. And I'm sorry to disappoint you but there is no recipe today. The main reason for that is I haven't cooked a thing all day. N and I went out for our first Christmas dinner with friends today. It was a lovely evening, good food, good company, but it felt a little to early to be Christmas. I ate turkey and we pulled crackers but I still don't feel festive yet. Saying that advent calendars start tomorrow and I must put up my tree this week. Once I've done that I'm sure that will get me in the mood. And now my 30 days food blogging challenge is over I can start thinking about Christmas shopping. And all the other things I've put on hold for the last month. Because amazingly by spending 30 minutes every day writing a post, I have neglected everything else. My admin pile is mountaining, I have phone calls to return, we are running short of clean clothes and lets not even start talking about my skirting boards! That is because I now realise that the only 'free-time' I have every day (weekends are a bit different of course) is about 30 minutes. And I've been using that blogging. But I have no regrets. It was a greater challenge than I had anticipated but I got to the end. It wasn't easy, about day 9 I broke down and sobbed to N that I couldn't do it anymore. But I got past the wall and it was worth it. What an achievement for an absolutely fantastic cause. Thank you to everyone who logged on and read my blog, particularly those of you who logged on every day. Without seeing how many page views I was getting I doubt I would have been motivated to carry on. Thank you to all the wonderful people who favourited and re-tweeted my tweets and to everyone who liked my Facebook status. You have all been amazing and I really hope that somewhere in these 30 posts there has been a recipe of two you have used. 

So for now this is goodbye. I promise to donate my money to CHECT this week. And for any of you feeling particularly generous as Christmas approaches you can donate directly at www.chect.org.uk. Apart from learning how little free time I have, this post has reminded me that if you try you can always find time for something you want to do. So although I have no intention of posting every day I do promise to keep adding something at regular intervals so please make sure you keep checking!