Oh What a Glorious Mess

What state is your home this near to Christmas? are you all straight with decorations all in place and cooking preparation all done? or are you up to your armpits in wrapping paper, still not got all the presents? or panicking because of all the cooking that still has to be done.

Me why I am all ready of course ..................not

My living room, although decorated is covered with presents and wrapping paper all over the floor, there are decorations and empty Christmas card envelopes jostling for space. but I love the chaos, I have never been a tidy person so it is almost impossible for me at this time of the year to be anywhere near tidy.



the poem reads:-

Wrapping presents on the floor;

Postman knocking at the door..

Decorations in every space,

Every room a special place.

Snowflakes glistening in the sun;

 Fire bright to warm each one.

Delicious smells from cooking pot,

Minced pies, puddings and the lot.

Sweets and fruit and nuts and nibbles,

Favourite drinks, what’s your tipple?

Chaos reigns, but do I care?

No, Christmas day is almost here.

Candle Light Sunday

Yesterday I did this layout very late and forgot to put it on my blog so here it is.

I love the last Sunday in Advent in our church, for although nowadays we don't use real candles we have lots of Christmas light around.
Why don't we use real candles?
I'll tell you why
One year I decided that we would have a real candlelight service and prepared candles in every available place, what a nightmare. I was constantly checking for candles getting too low and at one stage I managed to spill a lot of wax on the new carpet, luckily it did come out with brown paper and an iron. I didn't really manage to worship that evening because of being aware that I was responsible if any accidents happened because I was the one that made the decision to go ahead with it. No accidents luckily but I was told that I had probable violated the fire insurance rules.
so now we have electric candles except for the short time that the children's Christingles were alight and the advent candles each Sunday in December.

A letter to Father

Today we are to post a letter to Father Christmas, but he is a legend, someone who lived hundreds of years ago not someone alive and present from the dawn of time till the present day. My Father God is and I would much rather send a letter to Him, thanking Him for loving me and watching over me, guiding and directing my paths.

So here is my page.

Christmas Fare

Where are we eating? = Neil & Gemma's
What will we have? = most of us will be eating Turkey and ham and all the trimmings
Who won't be? = Gemma she is a vegetarian but she will have all the trimmings
Who will cook it? = Neil & Gemma
What will I be doing? = entertaining Rufus along with his other grandparent
Who will have the most fun? = Myself and Gill of course, we love to baby worship.
Who is buying the food? = ALL OF US

The Perfect Present

This is the tale of the perfect present, not easy to find as a rule, but this time I knew I had it. It didn't cost much but what satisfaction it brought both the giver and receiver.

What is it? you may ask.

Something quite simple

not particularly pretty,

in fact very plain.

It can be appreciated by all age groups except the very young,

I wonder how much of it Santa uses each year?

Have you guessed yet?

No?

Well I'll show you

Coconut Crisps

This layout shows one of my family's musts or at least with my son. He still loves to keep to the traditions that he grew up with although he and his partner are making their own traditions too. But certain things must happen. like these coconut crisps, pasties on Christmas eve and of course home made Christmas Puddings, which I have done since about 1977 the year I bought this little Christmas recipe book

Open House in Cricklade

I have gone for an old tradition that we had when we lived in Cricklade, a small close knit town in Wiltshire.
We always had open house on Christmas Eve which ended with midnight service at the Anglican, Church St Sampsons. We would all walk up to the church greeting everyone else as we went along, what a wonderful memory to record.
I still go to a midnight service somewhere as I really enjoy this one. Last year it was Christchurch in Swindon, it may be again this year if Neil decides to drive there, if not, I think I may find out if St.John's has one as that church is quite near to me. This year I will be able to go to Christmas morning service at my own church, something I haven't been able to do for some years as I haven't been at home.

Gifts Galore

I have gone for a DLO today as I wanted to record the photos taken from the first Christmas after John died and the gift tags I have made for the gifts this year.

Deck the halls

Several years ago I decided to embroider some Christmas decoration. My favourite of which are two bell pulls. I made up the patterns for them using existing snippets of other projects. Each year I carefully unpack them and hang them up somewhere. Even the year I was half packed up ready to move I still had to have these two and one or two other special decoration out, and as usual my brother laughed at me, especially as I was not even spending Christmas at home that year but with him and his family.

Carol Singing

For several years now a small group of us, from my church, have gathered on a Monday evening in mid December to go around the streets locally and sing carols. We don't collect money just try to bring the Christmas message. In the past we have had a good response, with people drawing back their curtains or coming to their front doors. Last year no one seemed interested so this year we decided to gather outside the church this morning. It was great to see people waving as they passed, winding down their car windows to hear us better. People in the bus shelter joining in as they waited for the bus and even the bus drivers waved as he collected his passenger.
We also had a much bigger turnout ourselves with twenty of us giving good voice to the old familiar carols.