'Apple'...what springs to mind?

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iPad, iPod, Mac...or the commonal garden, edible variety? 

We've just gotten back from a lovely weekend with friends who are old pompey neighbours, now living on an old strip farm outside Wells.  It's simply amazing and will be my city-dwelling children's countryside education.  We fed the chickens, collected eggs, looked at fox dens, saw badger tracks, pulled carrots and spent ages picking apples, and sorting them for storage, eating & cider making.

We've come home with eggs and bags of apples; now need to work out something to do with them.

But what a contrast to our day today on our way home...we stopped in Salisbury to have a day out with the in-laws, and the assault from the shops was madness!  Such a contrast, and I'm sure made more vivid since I haven't been in shops for a couple of weeks, and hadn't realised that Christmas had already arrived this year!  Santas, decorations, endless present ideas, Christmas trees.  (How do you explain all that to an almost 3 year old without making the world sound mad...OK, so I simply told her that the world had gone mad!)

So I've decided to start thinking about Christmas, and discover ways to get back to the simple apples in life, rather than the gadgets and wishlists.  I'm sure the kids will be just as excited by the mystery and fun of the celebrations, as getting a stack of plastic, packaging and stuff.  Generations before us did...let's try and rediscover some of it (it's not child abuse, honest!)