festive spirit

It's exhausting being off work. All that socialising and drinking and eating and talking absolute rubbish to various friends, family and general acquaintances! I'm having an enforced night away from it all tonight cos the little one has been on the sofa all day feeling sorry for himself with a temperature and a sad face. But he's looking a bit better now so it's back to it tomorrow... more drinks, friends, food and talking rubbish.
It'll be a relief to get back to work. Next year....

merry christmas

Have a good one people!
xx

shortest day

It is so flipping dark. Like all the time. Get up on a morning - dark. On the way to school - dark. On the way home - dark. Depressing. Makes you tired. Makes you wanna stay in bed. I was sooo happy when they broke up from school yesterday. I was really looking forward to a lie in this morning. 
Of course I didn't bank on the man from Amazon delivering my Christmas shopping at 7.07am. He must've been laughing his head off as he banged on the door as loud as he could. In the dark. Cheers mate.

dotty wren advent

Just posted my last pic on the Dotty Wren advent calendar. It was mucho fun sharing it with the others this year. Go have a nosey here.
Here's my contribution...

ho ho ho

Jeego have changed their name to PingSome.
Go download the app NOW...then you can send my fab e-card they created to all your mates...cos you know you probably missed the last posting date and you don't want to look crap do you...?

christmas shopping

I finally had a day off to do some Christmas shopping.
I'd already got a few bits for the little one so today I got some stuff for the big one. Only now the big one seems to have a lot more than the little one and I'm gonna have to go again to even the piles up. This could go on all week. 
That, my friends, is why I don't start my Christmas shopping in October...

  

eat, drink and be merry

This weekend I have eaten loads, drunk loads and been VERY merry at lots of different Christmas get-togethers. I'm now feeling very tired and not at all merry at the thought of having to get my arse into gear. It's time for me to face the reality that it's actually Christmas next week and as such I need to do all that stuff I've been putting off. Like buying some prezzies. And writing the cards I got printed in an organised manner weeks ago. And buying some food. And some drinks. So that next week we can all eat and drink ...and be very merry again....

print & pattern

Yay the Dotty Wrens are on Print & Pattern today with our advent calendar!
Go have a nosey....

tall skinny tree

Well, I couldn't stand the nagging any longer. We put the tree up yesterday. 
We always used to have a real tree. I love a real tree. I don't like pretend ones. But real trees are fat and three years ago, after 7 years of extreme-tree-mutilation trying to squish it into the available space, we gave in. Bought a faker. Tall and thin. Fits in the available space. We paid a fortune for it in the hope it looked real. But it doesn't. Cos real trees are fat and random. Our tree is tall and skinny and very uniform in shape. No wonder I don't get excited about putting it up any more. Might need to move house next year...

christmas fair

Tonight it was the little one's School Christmas Fair. Tomorrow is the Church Christmas Fair. On Sunday it's the Cubs' Christmas Fair. 
On Monday we will be skint and our house will be full of tat! Yay!

christmas tree

The little one came home and said he's the only kid in the whole school who hasn't got his Christmas tree up yet. He's lying of course. Who puts their tree up so flipping early?
Well actually, everyone it would seem. Drive round on a night and the streets are full of flashing lights and enormous trees in windows. What's going on? Trees used to go up the week before Christmas. Not at the start of bloody December (or the end of November like some folks round here! Seriously. A crime against good taste.)
I'm holding out. But I'm not sure how long I can stand the nagging. And moaning. And sad faces... 

here comes December...

Well that's November over super-fast. Must be getting old 'cos every month goes super-fast these days. I'm still getting over last Christmas...and now it's this Christmas!
Here's November on the blog...

Now... on to December... we're doing an advent calendar on our Dotty Wren blog...fly over here for a nosey...

40 quid jeans

The big one needed new jeans.
It is no longer acceptable for me to order her a nice pair from Boden or Next. Any suggestion of this would be met with incredulous disapproval and a few snorting noises. These days her jeans have to be Topshop.
Which meant that not only did I have to shell out 40 quid on the damned things but also that we had to go shopping in the last week of November. Prime-Christmas-shopping-frenzy-panic time. (Don't get me started on my irritation with people who do their Christmas shopping 3 months early then show off about it in a smug manner on every form of social media!!)
The 40 quid jeans are hanging in her wardrobe now. But I know that this will be their only visit.
From now on she'll store them on her bedroom floor. Screwed up with all her other clothes, clean and not clean. She says she prefers it that way...

Alf draws a picture!

The little one doesn't like drawing. He doesn't like writing. And he cries if you make him colour anything in. So I was a bit amazed when a Christmas pic popped out of his school bag. They must have forced him to do it. It's only the third picture he's ever done. In his life!
I saved him the horror of colouring it in...

little pink dress

I saw this LOVELY pink sequin dress on ASOS the other week and fell in love with it (I know it sounds YAK but believe me, it was a lovely dress) So knowing I had loads of Christmas bashes to attend I ordered it. In a very organised manner. And of course I threw in a couple of little black numbers on my order. To be on the safe side. In case I decided pink was too....pink...
Anyway, it arrived. It fitted. It looked fabulous. Yay.
I decided to wear it to the first bash on Saturday...the mums of Birkenshaw annual Christmas meal.
Well not so yay actually. Try finding shoes to match a little pink number. In winter. And a bag. And a coat.
I'm ok with black. I have a multitude of black shoes, black bags and black coats.
I have nothing to match pink. And nor do the shops. And I searched ALL the shops. I was happy to arrive at the nude-patent-court-shoe party a little late in the day but couldn't even find any of them that I liked. (Actually I did rather fancy a pair of Manolo's but my budget was stretched and it wasn't happening for 40 quid)
Add to that the stress of finding a bag and having to go out in sub zero temperatures coatless (who owns a winter coat to match bright pink sequins? Not me!) and I was swiftly going off the little pink dress....
Then my mother arrived to put the final nail in the coffin. When I took it out of the bag all the sequins had squished the wrong way. She pulled a face and said that if I sat down I would end up with a bum shaped mark at the back so I would be best standing up all night.
That was the point at which I decided that pink was not for me. I parcelled it up and sent it back.
So....little black dress it is for me on Saturday night. For a change. 
Anyway. Black is the new black dontchaknow dahling.