Saturday 26 December 2015

Christmas Day

A very lovely Christmas Day was had with family yesterday - just missing our youngest son who didn't want to come and my family in New Zealand who I miss dreadfully.


Christmas Morning


Little folk and presents gathered around the tree. 



Christmas Table - getting prepared







Merry Christmas!

Desserts:




Pavlova


Trifle


Christmas Pudding, Fresh Fruit Salad, Trifle, Pavlova


Loaf of bread for tea - a Christmas tradition of mine is to make a loaf of fresh bread - which always gets demolished!


Light Tea


Percy - pulled the stuffing out of this toy in the first five minutes!


With his antler


My Aunty Val with her new shower cap


Val & my MIL



Uncle Bob, Val & Mum (inlaw)


Hubby asleep - after all eating is such hard work!


Snooze....




Steven in his requested Christmas jumper that I made.


Tuesday 1 December 2015

Happy 1st December.

Wow, 1st December already!  How did that happen?

Been rather busy these last few weeks, painting and decorating, holding an afternoon tea party and culminating in my older son's graduation 'Passing Out Ceremony' as Officer of the Watch on Saturday night.

It was a lovely evening and we are very proud of how hard he has worked these last three years.  






He only has a couple of weeks left at Warsash now and then is home for the holidays before setting off on the high seas again in February/March.

So what about this painting and decorating?

Our younger son has left home.


So we changed the room from this....


...to this!  We now have a dining room.


Really pleased with it.  A few finishing touches still have to be done - the window frame will need painting in the spring/summer and the skirting boards need to be painted....oh and a new door as we had to remove the old one as he put a hole in it. 


Having a dining room meant I was able to finally invite some friends for a lovely old fashioned afternoon tea - we had a lot of fun!

Being able to remove the dining table and wall unit from the lounge meant we could space that out a bit more.


It feels much more open now.


Nice to have some space.


The Christmas tree will fit where the dolls are having their 'tea party' and after Christmas my writing bureau will move into that spot.

I started putting up some decorations today - and will gradually put up decorations over the next couple of weeks, updating photos as I do so.

In the meantime I still  have to tidy up the Sailor's room as I have been using that to store things while decorating and shifting the rest of the house round!

The work is never ending.

We had a really lovely Advent Concert at Church on Sunday - so much better and far more enjoyable than last year.  Lots of singing over the next few weeks with various rehearsals and concerts - so keeping busy with that as well.

Happy 1st December!