The Festive Season has started!

It's been a mad mad week but oh I am enjoying this so much! And with this I mean the December festivities. It is the best time of year for family fun, friends get together, school plays, fairs etc and we had all that this last week. And I am thoroughly enjoying myself writing this all down, listening to Take That (booked my tickets last week, yippee), drinking a lovely cup of tea, gazing at my Christmas tree and warming myself by the fire. It can't get any better (take note Mr Betsy!). 

So what exactly happened this last week that I couldn't get to my computer? Well for starters I had the lovely little ones from the arts and crafts club round to learn about Matisse. We did 'drawing with scissors'. We looked at some of the Fauve paintings but then focussed on his later life and we tried to interpret this into our own works. The children made fabulous 'Under Sea' versions, gardens, pink snowmen. It was fabulous. 

Then as I was making dinner, guess what happened? We heard a knock on the door and when we opened there was a huge bag of presents from St Nicholas. We believe possibly left by one of his helpers. The monkeys were thrilled to bits. And so were Mr Betsy and I, there were some yummy treats for us too. 

The rest of the week seems a little blur. Every day we had either a school play, school concert or a school fair. One of the things girl monkey did this week was to play a tornado in the Wizard of Oz, I was a little puzzled by what this might entail but she showed us some great choreography. 

Today I was finally able to sit down for a little while and enjoy the tree. Every year I say we will get it closer to Christmas but as soon as St Nicholas has been the monkeys get so excited over Christmas that I can't resist. It was a very special treat to do the decorating after school yesterday. In between all the commitments this week I have been very busy to get the house very homely. Even though this is a temporary home for us I need it to feel like home, especially at this time of the year. Mr Betsy got us some new book cases last week and since I rearranged all the furniture and put up a lot of the Christmas decorations it feels like we are in a new and very cosy home. 

Today was the one but last school fair. I added some more colours to the bead ball necklaces. As you might know purple was never my favourite colour but since it is growing on me I have even added this shade to my range!

Being in a homely spirit, I got myself some lovely lavender water and ironed these gingerbread gift bags that I sewed this morning with it. All nicely smelling for the fair. The last one tomorrow and then I can relax for a few weeks (well whatever that means in my book!).

'tis the season

I am starting to get very excited about the Christmas season, almost as much as girl monkey. Ever since she was a toddler she's been mad about Christmas. For a number of years she was asking from March onwards when we would put up the tree and unpack all the baubles. We've got a big box with all the decorations in it and it is just a treasure chest for her. I have been collecting decorations since I was little, some are from the fifties, others handmade from the seventies and every year I add some lovely little trinkets. So far this year I bought a teeny weeny little pig (I LOVE pigs!), little wooden reindeer and a teeny weeny Pinocchio from our trip to Italy. 

One of the bags of decorations that I kept for about 16 years ended up in the bin a few years ago. This needs some explaining. When I had my own little place when I was about 19, I bought my first little real tree and as I didn't have a lot of money left I got some little decorations and I bought a bag of marshmallow wreaths. These are very popular in Holland and look lovely in the tree with a nice red ribbon. I had put these up a couple of times but then they ended up in a box at my parents. Years later when I was pregnant my dad came over with a lot of stuff, including the box of Christmas decorations. So when we moved up North we got a really big tree and I was thrilled to put all the decorations in it. Girl monkey was just two and loved it all, including the marshmallow wreaths! How did she know they were once edible I do not know as she had not ever seen anything like it. Anyway two little wreaths and many dirty sheets later, they all ended up in the bin. I felt awful! She has never touched anything in the tree since but still adores Christmas.

I was really getting into the spirit today as I had to make some more gingerbread people for a friend (aren't they cute?)....

... and some doves and toadstools for the tree. 

The monkeys chose lovely biscuit stamps this afternoon on our way back through the village. They can't wait to bake. 

And then girl monkey asked me to take this picture to show EVERYONE, bless her. It is a lovely tree stump though, quite fancy one in our garden.

Not sure if I'll be blogging in the next few days as we've got to work hard to get our stock ready for the weekend! It's going to be bags galore again.

Christmas preparation

All of a sudden Christmas isn't so long off at all. Summer has only just been (well not really as we didn't have one) and we have already started to count down the weeks to the holiday season. The monkeys will be learning their songs at school soon and I have started to prepare for the the Christmas fairs in the next few months. There were cards galore as my Phoenix order arrived. My floor looked like this :

My table like this :

So I needed to do a bit of clearing up before I could finally start making things again. It is not always easy to get organised when all your lovely friends pop in for a chat and a nice cup of coffee. As a special treat today I made a delicious apple - plum crumble pie (I hope Mr Betsy is impressed, don't they say that the love of a man goes through his tummy?) Anyway by the end of the afternoon my table looked like this :

Meanwhile I have cut quite a few bits of fabric but as I am in the middle of making butternut squash soup I'd better go to the stove. I really am trying to impress Mr Betsy! If only I had the energy to make some crusty granary rolls to go with it but alas I am not perfect.......