Step into Christmas

We’ve been enjoying the company of our sweet friend and honorary sister Mary these last few days and following tradition, made our way to Daylesford to get into the spirit of the season.

We fall for the cool white and silvery beige tones every time: Such a contrast to the bright, gaudy decorations everywhere else.

But taste is a curse and such minimalism comes at a price.  Still, it costs nothing to look, does it?

The antidote to rampant consumerism on “panic Saturday” came in the form of Carols on the Hour at Gloucester Cathedral and as we sat listening to the Stuart Singers do their two gigs, we admired the “knitivity” (especially the cheeky camel!)

Poor Mary looks totally cheesed off by the whole affair, don’t you think?

We stepped into an altogether different Christmas at Abbeycwmhir on Sunday.  Don’t be fooled by the sober exterior.

Inside has been truly decked with not only boughs of holly but everything else as well.

After the muted elegance of Daylesford, believe me, it came as quite a shock.  52 rooms, all decorated for Christmas…

At least one tree in every room, each individually decorated to a theme.  This is the library tree.

This one stood in the billiard room amongst a range of stuffed animals.

The craft judge in me just had to take a closer look at that trailing braid to check if it was cross stitched (it wasn’t).

There was the crystal tree, with miniature pieces of crystal glinting in the light from the window.

A tree full of timepieces.

And a tree set amongst Royal Doulton figurines.  Many of them!  This is a house owned by collectors and one half of the couple, Paul gave us a great deal of background as he showed us around his home.

Because the remarkable thing is, Paul and his wife do really live here.  Not only that, but no door remains closed – this is a corner of one of the kitchen rooms.

Quite how they live in such an abundance of decorative “stuff” is a mystery to me.  I know that I would need to paint one room white and empty it of all the clutter just as a refuge.

But they must be used to it by now and of course, it’s their choice! 

When I reviewed my photographs, I was amazed that I managed to take one which had no sign of Christmas whatsoever.  That was quite an achievement, for as you can tell, Paul and his wife do not hold back with the decorations!

There was one room which would haunt me, however.  Filled with these knitted figures which are so frequently seen at village shows, they are every WI Craft Judge’s nightmare!  Yes, loads of work.  Not easy knitting.  Tricky construction.  But no play value whatsoever and what person do you know who would like one to grace their home?

I’ll take the cute camel every time.

Traditions

This time of the year above any other, is filled with happy traditions to which we look forward.  Avening WI’s Christmas party is always a fun affair with Shirley’s imaginative games and quizzes, including cheese tasting this year: Could you tell your Edam from your Emmental or your Camembert from your Cambozola? 

The stakes were high!

The morning after, there was the usual shopping to be done with a seasonally inappropriate bag to carry it in, don’t you think?  I’m having a thing about people dressed in seasonally inappropriate clothes right now, but when there’s blossom on a tree and primulas flowering in the garden, who can say what the season is, exactly?

Hardly typical of a December garden, is it?

It was the Stuart Singers’ Christmas concert weekend, so we had our traditional house full.  Perhaps not quite the same as every year, for sadly some friends couldn’t make it.  But two evenings of seasonal music enjoyed by a church full of appreciative supporters made for lively conversation over a glass or two the following day.

There’s a bit of tradition associated with our Sunday lunchtime affair too, which began, as always, with the arrival of our sweet neighbours bearing mistletoe.  Somehow, everyone knows the routine and helped themselves; we needed to do nothing more than enjoy their company and crank up the chocolate fountain.

When everyone had left, the “home team” enjoyed a peaceful couple of hours chatting over hot drinks and sweeties, looking through old December journals and remembering when. 

Sadly, both young government professionals had early starts on Monday morning, so they loaded up their little Nikolaus houses with the roof made of Smarties and the CurlyWurly fences and went off to catch a Sunday evening train back to London.

When he got back from the station, my hero and I kicked off our shoes and normal life resumed in front of the telly.  Another happy tradition 

O Christmas tree

We chose our Christmas tree last week and joked with the salesman about being picky about the shape, the colour, the arrangement of the branches and so on.

It’s been out in the garden all week but it was time to bring it inside and begin the decoration.

I referred to a slight meltdown with the lights last year and suffice to say, we didn’t want a repeat performance this time round.  Both of us had it in our mind that we needed a new set (several new sets) for our tree this year and when I first spotted them on a supermarket shelf back in October, I bought three 240 bulb sets of “white”  lights, thinking they’d do just fine. Yes, we have a big tree!

But yet again, we found ourselves surrounded by wires, transformers, plastic boxes and all manner of different sets of tree lights – including three new boxes bought fresh this year which turned out to be rather bluer in tone than the lights we had already got.  Bleh!  As we did our best to cobble together enough of the “warm white” lights for the tree from our collection (possibly a contender for the European Christmas Tree Light mountain) I thought back to when I was a child, when I remember my parents using a single set of just twelve lamps for our artificial tree.

 

I found this photo on ebay and remembered going into Woolworths to choose a couple of colourful new shapes to have as spares.  My favourite was a snowman.  Over the years we progressed, as did most families I imagine, through 2 sets of 24 multi-coloured fairy lights on a silver tree and on to  a similar number of plain white lights on a green tree again, influenced by time spent in Germany.

Here we are now, with brand new sets of 240 LED multi function lights which will perform all kinds of showy tricks but which we leave on “steady on”.

I suppose arranging lights on a Christmas tree is a mindless enough task to allow such reminiscing and thankfully, we managed to avoid total meltdown as we arranged the three new sets of lights and a fourth we had already which seemed to match.  Quite how there are 900 lights on that tree, I can’t begin to fathom, but I’m not going to count them!  That little set of twelve wouldn’t have gone very far, would it?

A couple of hours later, lights, baubles, ribbons and garlands in place , it’s time to take a photo.  The new lights are working just fine and after a bit of slight rearrangement to deal with a couple of dark spots, we think we’ve got it sorted.

Except

I don’t like the colour of these new lights.  They are cold, hard white and at night time I feel the need to put an extra layer on just to go near it

I’d better put a note in my calendar for September 2016 then, “buy new Christmas tree lights.  Check colour”

First time for everything

I’ve not been to a ballet class before.  Not even as a child, when Saturday mornings for me were spent at the swimming pool rather than in a dance studio.

When my hero and I were invited to attend an open class with one of our small friends though, we didn’t hesitate and this afternoon we spent a fascinating hour in the company of seven young dancers whose poise and grace during the class was remarkable. 

Not only did we learn quite a lot of ballet terms, I was fascinated by the deft manner their mothers had when it came to putting the girls’ hair up in a bun, for bringing up a son meant I never had to acquire such skills.  Anyway, after an hour of pliés, chassés and sautés, our small friend was pretty tired and ready for home.

But true to form, after the class we came back chez nous to create a page for her Christmas book about it. 

Magical days.

Das ist das Haus vom Nikolaus

The Bernina blog posted this entry recently and for a short time, I considered basing our Christmas cards on this idea.  I thought it might be fun to punch the holes in the card, to enclose a piece of thread and challenge our friends to complete the puzzle.  A DIY card, then.  But then I thought how this is one of those things I have to learn all over again every time I do it and it can be frustrating to keep trying (and failing) when you know the answer is so simple.  I decided against the idea, you’ll be glad to learn.

(all 44 solutions on WIkipedia)

Thinking about this on St Nikolaus today, the 6th December (did you clean your shoes last night?) I found many references to the puzzle in German, but hardly anything in English, except for this useful resource (with one simple solution!)  I also came across the mathematical theory which underpins it – I knew nothing about Eulerian paths until now (and still don’t know much!)  I also discovered the next step of the puzzle…und nebenan vom Weihnachtsmann!

You’ll be glad to know that some routines from Nikolaus have been observed today, as well