New year’s blessings

As an impressive sunset settles over us tonight, so many of us will be sharing with others the hopes and expectations that we have for the coming year. Some may be considered trivial, others life changing, but all are important enough to have been decided on for the coming of the new year.

In all honestly I probably couldn’t tell you what all mine were without looking them up in my diary. I know a few of them, and I know that I have struggled to keep to one or two of them as well, but I like so many will be taking this opportunity to start as I mean to go on.

Most involve kindness, in particular to my long suffering husband – I suffer from that eternal affliction of having to be right! Always having an opinion on things, especially trivial things, seems to be my speciality, so I will once again be learning to try and keep myself in check again in 2012.

Spending more of my evenings making things, and using my quiet time usefully will be right up there at the top, along with limiting myself on using the computer, iPad, etc. To 90 minutes a day (excluding listening to talking books and music, as I can work whilst listening), and that includes the odd sneaky peek at facebook and especially blogs, which see me reading them until way after the clock has chimed midnight! 90 minutes is still quite a lot so I’m hoping that it will be a fairly straightforward resolution to keep.

Will you be joining in with the resolutions this year?

Christmas Confessions

Well now, here it comes, that gushing, sentimental post about time spent together as a family, and savouring beautiful moments within our children’s ever changing lives.

Yes, all that and more so of course, but in all honesty, no.

Will I be chained to the Internet equivalent of the stocks for actually putting it out there that our Christmas had its clearly less than enjoyable moments in it, and for Hubby and I things are only just beginning to feel festive despite being surround by beautiful greenery and beautiful children enjoying their gifts?

It started with the realisation that the Tallest had brought home with her a little more than her collection of crafted presents from school, a discovery made on Christmas Eve I might add, so treatment done, clothing and bedding changed, and early baths for everyone on Christmas day morning. Scratch, scratch. Such Fun! Not.

I have been suffering with a severe chest infection in the run up to Christmas, bruised and pulled ( suspected cracked) ribs, antibiotics, anti inflammatories and pain killers all being used to full effect, but still not giving me the relief that I needed to get what constituted as a full nights sleep, so awoke exhausted by not just the frantic last minute preparations.

To then suffer the ultimate insult I was ‘glutened’ by my poor unsuspecting father, who had worked so hard to create a delicious gluten free lunch, only for him to erroneously feed me the wrong pud at the end of the day, so my Christmas ended at approximately 6pm when I could finally no longer keep body and soul together, lost my lunch and was swiftly taken, weeping, upstairs by my darling man, whilst the girls played with their new toys unaware of my sudden turn for the worse. Boxing Day was spent in a fug of recovery, snoozing and generally being pretty unbearable to be around, and my mood has only just now begun to improve. ( Why does being glutened affect my mood so – there must be a reason I’m sure)

So there you have it, a bit of a pants Christmas if we are being really honest about things, but they are on the up, we had a good blustery walk on the beach, lunch at a local ( gluten free friendly) pub, and visited my ( still feeling terrible about it – bless!) Dad and Mum today. With plans to visit the girls Godparents tomorrow and then have friends over for lunch and a hearty walk on Saturday. So all in all things are heading in a more positive direction.

I realise that, when looking at those three photos up there I could of fabricated some cosy Christmas idyll with which to entrance you with, living as I do in a household where even the dogs get Christmas gifts, buts that’s not my style is it? A friend once told me that she enjoyed my blog posts because they are honest, they deal with the reality of life, especially life with two small children and a plethora of other problems to contend with on a daily basis, and who am I to disappoint?!

Be seeing you in the New Year, if not before. X

Festive Preparations

Bringing the greenery into the house made me realise that it’s been too long since I wrote a post. (Secret sewing and knitting after two little cherubs are tucked up in bed have put pay to having an evening to play catch up here.)

I’m trying my best to not allow the thought that I ‘ought’ to make people their gifts for Christmas, out way the fact that there is only so much humanly possible. (And it’s nothing a popcorn and movie afternoon next week won’t allow me to play catch up on.) So many biscuits and sweet things can be made when the smaller members of the household are drawn into a world of armchair adventures. It’s not that I don’t want them to help…okay, strictly speaking that’s not true – as much as I love to see them having fun in the kitchen with me, it does nothing for the time and motion! So distracting them with some good old fashioned fun won’t hurt every once in a while.

We collected and decorated the Christmas tree on Sunday, we have decided to give our pot grown tree a rest this year as the dry summer hasn’t done it too much good, the Girls and I have plans to decorate it with some popcorn strings, and fat balls so that it still gets the yearly dressing that it deserves, and the bird population will benefit.

I am particularly pleased with the wreath on the door, made entirely with found foliage. I used this this years growth on the Buddlea ( I do have willow growing down at the allotment, but couldn’t face wrapping myself and the crew up for the half hour there and back so made do with what was to hand). Wrapped up with Clematis, and then decorated with Holly, Ivy and seed heads, it’s made a welcome addition to our front door.

With the nature of making the Girls Christmas gifts, I have often reached a point in the evening when I no longer want to concentrate on small stitches on stretchy fabric, and neatness, and have become happily distracted by the joys of felt. In one evening, 10 felt hearts, 5 buttons, 6 beads, some stuffing, and finger knitted yarn became a cheerful addition to the Fireplace, potentially good gifts for friends and family next Christmas I feel, and variations already ordered by a certain young lady for her next birthday – ” Can you do them in Pink and Purple Mummy?” !

Hopefully I will continue to blog, if a little erratically over the next two weeks, I have missed getting it down here. I truly do see it as a journal of sorts. Abeit one that sometimes writes back to you.

Good luck with all your Christmas preparations, and don’t forget to enjoy them!

Too excited to have a quiet ‘moment’ this Friday

There it is, this is my moment for this week, but I have the chatters today.

I’m excited about the fact that I am off to stay with good friends this weekend.

I’m extremely excited that I may be spending a weekend in Athens in September sans my family, with another lovely friend who is having a film shown at a Film Festival there. I will let you know more when things are confirmed.

I’m excited that I got a good nights sleep (lame but true, a rare thing in this household)

I’m excited that I have booked out an Owl energy monitor from my local library, and am having a whale of a time watching my usage, and thinking that as a household we are already doing a pretty good job at keeping things in hand.

What things are rocking your boat at the moment, it’s great to have things that throw normal life up into the air isn’t it! Isn’t it?

Catching up on sleep amongst other things…

Posts have been very thin on the ground of late haven’t they? I don’t suppose theres much use in offering up an apology, as it’s not really appropriate, after returning from the Festival, we washed clothes and restocked, then spent a further couple of days camping more locally.

Friday the Smallest woke up sounding like a distressed seal.

With a temperature through the roof, and the liquid paracetamol not having much effect, she was taken to our doctors, and told we were narrowly avoiding a trip to the local A & E dept. (Thanks to us being less panic prone than some parents) A croup throat infection was diagnosed, this was three days ago, last night the whole family had their first full nights sleep. The Smallest has been, quite rightly irritable, grumpy and uncomfortable. When three out of four of you are awake at 1am two days in a row you know someone must be ill…

Steroids and antibiotics could not be avoided, and the more gentle approach will have to compliment these harsher medicines, throats are being soothed with fruit juice lollies laced with echinachea tea, and plenty of vitamin rich fruits to snack on.

So, onto more pleasant activities that were had the weekend before this one, the puppet performances…

This last picture says it all for me…it was a busy weekend, puppeteering requires forethought aplenty, and when you have children to deal with this is not always a smooth run affair.

I’m happy to say that our Festival began and ended with seeing favourite bands, we arrived in time to see The Lost Padres first set ( a particular favourite of MrGT) and ended with Praying For The Rain, who are one of my all time favourites, I find them so uplifting, and come away from hearing them play with an enormous sense of well being. (heres their official site too, which is full of information)

Perhaps it was that well being that has kept us going over these rockier days, so here’s to a more calmer ebb and flow over the next few weeks, we have finally entered the hallowed territory of the Summer Holidays, so things should have a more relaxed feel to them.