Overwhelmed

We’ve had a wonderful couple of days and our Christmas was everything we could have hoped for – and more. 

Quite how Father Christmas manages to squeeze so much into my stocking I have no idea, but squeeze in a lot he does and once again, the surprises kept on coming, right down to the toe.

The turkey was the best ever and even though it was the smallest we’ve ever had, we have still got plenty for sandwiches.

The cracker jokes were suitably groan-inducing – eg. what do you get when you cross a snowman and a vampire?  Frostbite!  I did rather like getting a red sports car in mine, though.

Opening presents later, we were surprised to find that in one case, someone else had opened it first! Diana, the TSA had clearly been through your suitcase pretty thoroughly, hadn’t they? 

As we sat savouring the last drops of wine, doing our best to finish every last morsel of the teaspoonful of Christmas pudding I’d persuaded everyone to try, the most beautiful (double) rainbow appeared in the sky across the valley. 

What a day.

Rainy days and Mondays

 

Christmas Eve and we have a date with a turkey – or rather, with the lady who holds the key to the cold store at our local supermarket. 

 

We checked the opening times last night and discovered that unlike some of the stores who were going to open at midnight, Waitrose was leaving it till 7am.  Did we really need to go that early?  Well, old habits stay with us and bearing in mind the scrum that was there on Saturday, we decided to bite the bullet and just go and get it over with.

But a wilder and wetter morning was seldom seen and the queue was one of the most ill tempered bunches of people I’ve come across.  Quite what happened to peace and goodwill, seasonal spirit or plain old good manners, I have no idea.

Thankfully, back at home, we have plenty of sweetness.

  

I’m going to spend the day working on my December Daily journal, counting my blessings and feeling thankful for family and friends.

With all good wishes for a very Happy Christmas! 

The days fly

I began recording the days as a result of a suggestion from my Mum that by doing so, I’d somehow be able to keep these special times forever.   At this time of the year there is so much happening, so many lovely things to do and to see, I can’t help myself but simply make the most of it all. Of course, if I’m busy doing then that doesn’t leave much time for recording.  Hence the lengthy silence at this end.

Well, of course, I am recording it all, just not quite in the finished state.  I’ve got folders of photographs which tell the story of secret santas and party games.  I’ve got little piles of tickets and programmes from choir concerts and other bits of ephemera which will eventually find their way into my December Daily journal.

I’ve got records of meetings and rather more serious training events, to which I did my best to bring a little seasonal cheer.

Thankfully I have no battle scars from braving Oxford Street on the busiest shopping day of the year.  Well, we walked all of a hundred metres or so, keeping our little group of family and friends close together amidst the excitement of it all, on our way to an early supper and Tra’s recital. 

A huge surprise to find familiar faces on the front page of Vietnam+ then, but even greater amusement when Google Translate offers “Mark Thomas in a province west of the capital, near the coastal city of Bristol, and his wife train more than two hours to get to London.”   Most important, however, were the great reviews today!

Sadly, Diana had to return to Los Angeles yesterday but we brought Mary home with us and have settled into an easy week-before-Christmas routine of a little light mooching about local places and fiddling about in the studio and kitchen, talking twenty to the dozen, catching up and making plans.  Oh, and watching the last series of Downton again with Mary, ensuring she gets a head start before it’s shown in the USA after Christmas. Jane, you should be here too!

So for now, we’re savouring the days and leaving the recording of them till there’s more time, when the house is quiet and I can sit and recall how lovely it is to be home in all the twinkle.

The little “topiary” dog in the photo above made us smile, the more so when we walked a little further down Long Street in Tetbury to the flower shop and turned around.  The general opinion though, was that the joke has now worn thin, especially since other dogs have taken to using it as an example.

See what I mean?

Glitter Central

My studio is covered with a fine sheen of glitter these days.  The floor twinkles in the sunshine and every surface appears to have been sprinkled with stars.  Yes, you could say it needs a bit of a clean up!

But the recent Silhouette sale of ready made designs for my cutting machine meant that I’ve been distracted by one or two fun things, one of which is this little Gingerbread house.  It came together so quickly and looked so cute, I cut another couple of them out to take with us when we kept our two small friends company on Saturday evening.

They found it surprisingly easy to make, having no problem at all choosing the best glue to use for each part and applying it so carefully that it didn’t go all over the place.

It was fun to decorate the houses too, to make each one different and give it a little personality.

The hardest thing was having patience to let the glitter glue dry.  These carefully drawn features didn’t stay that way for long, sadly!

But best of all was the generous application of glitter, fake snow and sequins!

One instance where more is most definitely better, don’t you think?

Doing their job

We’re home.  It was a good flight and we both slept well but it’s good to be back, for sure.

As soon as I spotted the combination lock on my suitcase set to 000 I knew that it had been inspected by the security people.  Sure enough, inside was their little billet-doux.

I can’t imagine why they choose my suitcase to open and inspect, can you?  I wonder what they think ;-)