A little angel

I so wanted to share these pictures of a little gift I made ages ago, but I had to be patient ( not something I am terribly good at, lol ) because the recipients of this little gift do read my blog. I need to explain, I think.

If you have been reading my blog for a while you will know that after many years our dear friends Will and Theresa were finally able to adopt and bring home their daughter Mae last year.

This beautiful little girl has finally made their lives complete and I wanted to make a little something for them as a reminder of their first Christmas together as a family. I have to thank Dawn from The Feathered Nest for the fabulous idea. Her fairies in a jar inspired me to make a Christmas Angel in a Jar for them. I had a gorgeous old picture of an angel and a lovely old French jar, which I thought would be perfect for what I had in mind. I think I had a smile on my face the whole time I was putting it all together.

Then came the bad news - Mae had chicken pox and they couldn't come and visit as arranged. But this turned out to be quite fortunate, because W & T just happened to post some photos of Mae on their blog and I thought that Mae as the Christmas Angel would be so much more personal. YAY! I nicked a pic off their blog and printed it out. The wings were made from parts of the Christmas Carol, which the very generous Graphics Fairy Karen had posted only a little while earlier ( I also used it on the bag, see last photo ). I removed the original angel and replaced it with Mae, and she looked just gorgeous. So everything turned out for the best in the end, lol.

And this is it -


I am pleased with the way it turned out, and I am so glad that T & W loved it as well. It was a real pleasure to make, especially the second time round with the photograph of Mae, lol.

xxx

What a wonderful couple of days

Ahhh, it has been great. No stress, no arguments, just a wonderful Christmas Day with DH's parents, my two sons who are still at home and middle son and his partner and darling daughter yesterday, and a day of blissful vegging out, watching films, cuddling dogs and nibbling on leftovers and lovely little tidbits today.

Christmas Eve was a little tiring, because as usual, I had left most of the clearing up til the last minute. The hall did finally get tidied up, and looked very Victorian Christmassy with the colourful tree, quilts and candles -


My granmother knitted this Santa, oh, probably 45 years ago or thereabouts. I treasure it -

All the prezzies were finally wrapped in the evening and put by the fireplace in the drawing room

Christmas morning I started early getting the dining room ready for the Christmas meal in the afternoon. The fireplace was decorated, the table was laid, and the table centre was put together. This year I put the candelabra into a lovely old pressed glass bowl, and filled it with vintage baubles.


I love the way the candles drip down, and see the gorgeous old Santa ornaments in the bowl, aren't they just so cute? Oh, and you can probably see this here David Bailey in the baubles as well, tehehehee.

I love the muted colours of winter potpourri, and this one scented our little dining room beautifully

Our guests arrived at lunchtime, and once everybody was happily installed, we opened our presents. It was hilarious, there were many fun presents which had us all in stitches. More about the prezzies another time though. Here are just a few piccies -

Our darling Grace opening her presents
and thoroughly enjoying playing with Mummy and Daddy's stocking presents, lol, I think they have lost them to her

DH's dad was of course wearing his precious Christmas socks again. I really don't know how they have survived this long, we bought them as a silly little tree present for him about 25 years ago, and they are still going strong.

Things did a get a little silly

before we all settled down to our Christmas meal -

It was yummy. We started with a clear chicken soup, just the way my mum and my grandmother used to make it in Germany. Instead of a huge turkey, we had roast chicken and a most delicious honey and mustard coated ham with roast potatoes, roasted squash, carrots and onions. Of course there were brussels ( which we all love ), creamed parsnips, honey glazed carrots, a white onion and parsley sauce for the ham and gravy for the chicken. We did manage a bit of Christmas pud for dessert, but left the cheese and biscuits for much much later.

We really had a most relaxing day and the hours just flew by. Nanny and Popeye left about 9pm, and we realised then how pooped we were. Didn't stay up much later than that, lol, we all went to bed quite early. Such lightweights, lol.

And today, well today was a day for just vegging, nibbling, watching a few films and just spending some happy time together. I love Christmas. And I sincerely hope that all of you had as good a time as we had. I am still full of Christmas joy, lol, and could smile at and hug everybody, so watch out!!! xxxxx

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
(You need Flash to open the card )

The annual clear up........

is under way, and I actually managed to get the drawing room sorted. Sort of. Well, the Christmas decorations are up in that room. I really do look forward to decorating the drawing room, because my youngest DS is always ready and willing to help and I love working with him. Sort of. We have the usual arguments, loss of temper at the top of the ladder, Christmassy music, and tinsel flung in disgust ( by DS - " I can't do it, you do it, mum! ). But this decorating day is precious to me, because when they are all grown up, its not always easy to do things together. Once the room is decorated ( quite restrained really ), we stand back, have a hug, and admire our handiwork. Its lovely to reminisce about Christmasses past for a few mins, and my darling DS is always full of compliments about the decorations ( even though they haven't really changed in god knows how many years ). This year I did add some new ones though, the beautiful crocheted spirals you can see on the tree.

I suppose I had better show you the room then, hadn't I? Here goes -

During the day

At night

The fireplace


The Christmas tree

The chandelier, which makes everything sparkle so

My darling Poppygirl, stealing my tea when my back was turned ( thats not quite what I called her when I heard her slurping my tea )

Advent candles on the table

sharing the table with this winter potpourri

Golden potpourri on a little side table

I'll show you some pictures of some of the ornaments, most of which we have had for many years. The only new ones are these pretty crocheted spiral ornaments my mum made for me this year

One of a set of felt ornaments I made many years ago

Birds, I love the birds snuggling down in the tree

large glass drops

and some big sparkly ornaments

I have had a set of these capiz shell ornaments for, oh, at last 20+ years. Precious little things.

And last but not least the tree ornaments which started the whole white/silver decoration thing at least 20 years ago, the lace stars I made

I made sets for my mum and for my mother-in-law as well, and they put them up each and every year, bless.

There you go, thats the drawing room done, sort of, only got the rest of the house to go now, lololol. Tomorrow I'll have a fun post for all of you out there who love ( or hate ) Marmite. It really did tickle me, errrrmmm, the thing I want to show you. About Marmite. Which you either love or hate. We all love the stuff, even the granddaughters. Mind you, it took me ages to get used to it, my German palate just wasn't used to such a weird taste.

Cheerio, and don't stress, its only Christmas! xx

We saw Rudolph, the real real Rudolph!

Well, thats what my darling granddaughter Paige is utterly convinced of.

We went to the place where we always get our fresh Christmas tree, a farm just outside our town. We were so hoping that the reindeer they have had there for the last few years would be there again this year, because Paige was so fascinated by them last year. And we were not disappointed, Rudolph and a lot of his reindeer friends were there, munching away on hay, mostly ignoring all the kids ( and adults!) staring at them. Rudolph himself was in a pen all on his own. Well, thats understandable, I mean the biggest star always gets a room all to himself, right? It might also have had something to do with his huuuuuuuuuuge antlers, they did look quite scary. But thats why we couldn't get a decent picture of him. Still, you can see his big antlers, they were what convinced Paige that he was the real thing, the REAL RUDOLPH -


And just look at his friends, they are such beautiful animals -

Paige was really smitten by them and was so excited. She told me that they would only be on the farm until Christmas Eve though, because then Santa needed them to pull the sleigh, bless her.


Last year they allowed the children into the pen to stand near the reindeer, and we were hoping that they would do the same again this year. We thought we had better go and pick a Christmas tree while we were waiting for the people in charge to turn up -

When we went back to the barn after spending a good half hour finding our perfect tree, they were just setting up the camera and lights etc., to take photos of the kids with the reindeer. We waited patiently for the first lot of kids to have their picture taken and then Paige was allowed in with the reindeer. She was a little cautious at first -


but soon got over the initial nerviousness and loved being so close to the reindeer who would soon be pulling Santa's sleigh -


We had a wonderful couple of hours, an emotional reminder of what our Christmasses were like when our boys were little.