O Christmas Tree

Hello :) I've not been around here for a few days because I've not been very well but I'm feeling a bit better so I thought I'd pop on here before I go and brave the crowds at the Trafford Centre (wish me luck!)

Saturday was great fun. I really enjoyed the concert and was surprised at how many songs I knew. I think Mr P was a bit scared when I started singing along but never mind! The first half of the concert was songs from Jason's new album (which are covers of 50s and 60s songs) and the second half was a bit of a "cheese-fest" with songs like Sealed With a Kiss and Nothing Can Divide Us. Great fun :) I did take some pictures and a little video so if I remember I'll try and post a couple of them on here - judging from your comments on my last post there are a few Jason fans out there ;)

The Christmas Markets were absolutely packed. We didn't stay there long because I was feeling a bit shivery and I'm not very good with big crowds of people as I get a bit panicky. We're going to try and get there again before they finish next week but might run out of time! To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the stalls we did see as it was a load of tat and very expensive. When they first started doing the markets a lot of the items were handmade and were being sold by the original artists but this year it seemed to be the same sort of mass produed items on a lot of the stalls :(

The craft fair we went to was very good and I got a little felted heart brooch and some fabric badges which were very cute. There were a few bits and bobs I would have loved to have got but it was the wrong side of payday!

I'm still doing JYC but am still behind. The pictures on this post are for the day (can't remember which day it was ) that was about Christmas Trees. I'm off all over Christmas and New Year so there will be some serious scrapbooking going on then :)

So here are some of my favourite decorations on our Christmas tree. We go for the "more is more" look here and there are very few branches on our tree that don't have something dangling from them...

The bell bauble was from Tesco and the snowman came from the church fair a couple of weeks ago:
More Tesco decorations. They had a big half price sale on them a couple of weeks ago and I went a bit nuts!
This one is an iris folded bell that I made a couple of years ago:

This bell came from a flea market at the Civic Centre in Uppermill last year. There were loads of baubles with it which decorate our mini tree on the dresser.
I'm going through a bit of an obsession with owls at the moment and this little guy is very sweet!

And finally, Missy snoozing on "her" chair. I thought cats were supposed to be elegant but neither of mine are when they're sleeping. Mollie's even worse. She lies legs akimbo showing everything. Naughty girl ;)

I took all these pictures on my new phone (I'm still working out all the features on it) and uploaded them directly onto Blogger before coming in on the computer to edit the post and add my writing. It makes it so much easier than having to dig out the lead from the camera and resize pictures etc before posting them. I love technology sometimes!

OK, enough from me, I'm off to finish my Christmas shopping and find a dress for my Christmas do. See you tomorrow

xx

Let it snow!

Ok, cheesy title but this was the scene that greeted me this morning when I opened my front door :

We hadn't expected it to snow so it was a great surprise. Even though it has been getting colder these last few days (and we had some snow that didn't stick yesterday), this is the first "proper" snow we've has this winter and I was so excited! I was supposed to be in work today so I got in my car to attempt to drive to work. I didn't even make to the end of my street as the roads hadn't been gritted and my car was slip-sliding everywhere. Luckily I could take the day off work so me and Mr P wrapped up warm and donned our wellies to go for a walk in the snow.

We decided to go along the canal. It was so pretty with all the snow...

A lot of the canal was frozen over completely but there were one or two bits where the ice had started to melt and all the ducks were huddled there. I'm really glad I'm not a duck because they looked freeeeeeezing!

When we walk along here in the summer we often like to stop at this bench and watch the barges go past, but the bench was thick with snow this afternoon so unless we wanted a wet bum we had to keep going!

Although it looks very peaceful in these pictures, we actually met quite a lot of people along the way and stopped to have a chat with them. That's one of the things I love so much about living here - everyone's so friendly. There was an elderly man with his little dog, who was wearing a cute little red jacket to keep her warm, and one man who was clearly a lot braver than us because he was wearing shorts! It was below freezing! They must make 'em tough up here...

We walked along this road to the next village because I wanted to go to the scrapbook store there to get supplies for my Journal My Christmas album. We were talking to the owner there who lives a few streets away from us. She said her road hadn't been gritted this morning (and it's one of the main roads in the area too!) and so all the cars were crashing into the parked cars. Apparently a few drivers just abandoned their cars and walked to wherever they were going. The local newspaper said that one of the other nearby villages was completely cut off and there had been a lot of accidents because of the weather.

So pretty - it's like a scene from a Christmas card. I hope it's like this on Christmas Day but more often it's just cold and rainy!

The clouds were so thick you couldn't even see the tops of the hills!

We stopped at one of the local pubs for lunch and had a Cointreau coffee to help us warm up - yum!

Coming back from the village we saw a snowman that someone had built. All the schools around here are closed because of the weather so the children have all been sledging and playing in the snow. Being the big kids that we are, me and Mr P had a snowball fight before we set off and I'm proud to say I gave Mr P a good whupping :)

When we got back we decided to let the kitties go out at the back to see the snow. This was the first time they've been outside so we put little ribbons on their collars so they didn't get frightened and run off on their own. We are going to let them out when they are a little bit older but they haven't been done yet so we didn't want to take any chances!

Missy was a bit unsure of the snow and didn't really go far from the back door, surprising as she is usually quite adventurous.

Mollie seemed to really enjoy it and even went in the snow. She was funny because every time she took a step she shook the snow off her paws :)

They're both curled up in front of the fire now after their little adventure, snoozing and stretching.

Strangely enough, today's Journal Your Christmas was about the weather, so I am going to use my blog entry for today along with a couple of my favourite photographs from the ones above.

What's the weather like where you are today?

x