Blogmas Day Five - Decorations Up and Mince Pies Eaten

Traditionally I have always put my decorations up on our anniversary, but this year I was one day ahead of the game, and my little tree was adorned with all it's usual little memory gems on the third.  

Alan also had his strange tree up but it was undecorated on the third, so he finished it off on our anniversary and now it suddenly looks almost normal.  It's one of those that collapses down on itself and fits in a flat square box once Christmas is over, he loves it ... me not so much.  It will be interesting to see what happens next year if we are in our bungalow by then!!

 

I tried to get some photos of the rest of my little array of decorations, but the light was terrible ... anyway you can get the gist.  Each decoration holds dear memories of various stages of our lives.  

The two ceramic angels were bought for my first Christmas in my own little rented house when I was separated from my first husband, so they pre-date Alan by quite a while.

The American pick-up truck and the 'bauble plate' were bought from a charity shop when we lived in the rented flat in our current town, after selling our smallholding in Wales, and just before we bought the house we are in now.

The tiny caravan was bought when I lived in the caravan, and the 'bear in the forest' light-up dome when we moved to this house.  

Memories that come out each and every Christmas.

We still stop at the services on the way home from visiting Mum each time we go, and it's now become almost traditional to get a sausage roll each ... meat for Alan, vegan for me ... but added to the Christmas mix have been a doughnut for Alan and a mince pie for me.  They had no single pies for sale on Wednesday this week, so what was a girl to do ... yes, I bought a pack of six.  

Which was a bit of a bargain when one costs £1 and six costs just £3.25. 😄

I brought five of them home and shared nicely with Alan.

Sue xx  

Blogmas Day Four - A Very Booky Christmas Tree

 

Ooh I wish I was artistic enough to be able to build something like this.  But instead I will sit back and admire this photograph and then look at my own little tree and admire her too.

I bought us two Christmas crackers from the animal charity shop in Fleetwood a few months ago.  They should have been 20p each but I gave £1 ... which still makes them a bargain to me.  My intention was to find something tiny that suits us both to put in each of them for Christmas Day ... I need to get my act together and find those 'something tinies' as soon as possible.  But if I run out of time there are always sweets to pop in instead.

We got the decorations down from the top bedroom in the house the other day, and discovered in the big plastic box half a dozen more crackers.  

There will be a lot of pulling of crackers this year. 🎄

Happy Anniversary Alan ... we've been married for 18 years today. 💖

Sue xx

Blogmas Day Three - Using Up the Bitty Bits

 

I have been so careful for a long time now not to waste anything.  Wasted food is good money thrown away and bad for the environment to boot.

I build meals around the things that I find loitering with intent for far too long in the fridge, and just recently I have pretty much caught up with the stragglers.  I do still have to be careful though when I take things out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge ... and then forget about them, because then the backlog starts again.

This late breakfast was a real mash-up of bitty bits.  The free Flora pot that I brought home from the garden centre, the two wrinkliest of the little sweet peppers from the veg drawer, a random slice of red onion, two spinach pellets from the freezer and a couple of eggs.

All added together and cooked in my small frying pan it made for the tastiest of meals, and remarkably filling for the size of it.  I even managed to turn it over in the pan to cook the other side, and slide it out onto the plate without breaking it 

Wonders will never cease.  😃

Sue xx

Blogmas Day Two - Not All Garden Centres Have Dinosaurs

 

Seemingly not all garden centres have dinosaurs this year.

Burnside garden centre in Thornton-Cleveleys has avoided the dinosaur rush and gone with Nordic Santas ...

... and very surprised looking Moose!!

We called round one day last week to claim our free November coffees before they vanished into the ether and only Decembers were left for this year.

Happily the day before we went we received a voucher from the company for a free 'treat jar'.  So along with the free coffees that we enjoyed with our choice of 'small breakfasts',  we got a jar that should have been £5, and a voucher at the till for a 'buy one get one free' small breakfast in January.  I tried to choose the jar that was the least Christmassy as I don't like 'seasonal' kitchen things, but I think I can get away with a gingerbread man jar for far longer than the festive period. 😁

So that will be a good morning out, two breakfasts and two coffees for a total of £6.50 the price of one small breakfast.  They are obviously wanting people to visit the garden centre and shop the sales in January.  But I think we will just go for the food and drink after all it will be Alan's birthday on the 8th and you can't beat a birthday treat, I might even surprise him and pay.  😃

Sue xx

Blogmas Day One - The Books That I Read in November

 

It's here, December has rolled in with the wettest of nights.  

We had almost torrential rain bucketing down all night and only easing off with the early morning light of a dull December day.  But now we can relax into the twinkling lights that sparkle in all the shops and bop to the Christmas music they play in an effort to get us parted from our money.  But now there are no glares from the 'bah humbug' brigade as we are officially on the countdown to Christmas.

It's also perfect reading weather, so after I list the books that I read in November on here for posterity, I will be digging out all the Christmas themed books from my books shelves and getting myself ready to have a very booky December.

It wasn't such a good reading month again last month just three books completed and the beginning of a fourth ... I must do better!!

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

I started the month by reading the last quarter of this book.

It was a very good read, and while I thought I had solved the crime ... I hadn't.  There was a delicious twist at the end.  This would make a brilliant binge-worth tv series.

Donated

 ... just because I rarely keep fiction books for rereading, and obviously I know who did it and why.  😄

The Money Secret by Rob Parsons

This is a very unique book written in a very unusual way and it makes it an easy read.  

I enjoyed the quirky aspect of it and really sunk into it and it's message.  There was very little that I didn't already know, having paid of large debts myself in the past and lived with little to no money for a time.  But it reinforced an awful lot for me and made me happy that I had come through this stage of my life, and indeed come through it well and learnt a lot for myself.

If only I had had this book back then, perhaps my journey would have been shorter.

This book has been kept.

Floating Home by Adam Lind

This is one of the few books that I have purchased new this year, and I have to say it was worth every penny.

Adam has written the book of his life up to now, interspersing his story with segments called 'Humans of the Waterways'.  The stories of their lives from friends of his, both new and old, many of whom I have already watched on YouTube for a long time.  The whole book was a joy and at times very philosophical.  

There was one very simple sentence that changed my whole mindset.  Basically it's when you feel that something is too much for you to cope with, simply change that you have got to do it, to that you get to do it.  I have put it into action a few times since reading the book and it's really worked.

As an example, yesterday I might have said 'I have got to go and visit Mum today'.  To be truthful I was dreading the visit after the last one when she was virtually comatose, and we both came away so sad.  Instead I said to myself when I woke up...  'I get to visit Mum today'.  Because she is still with us, because we have a car to get us down the motorway, because while I have been too bad to drive Alan has cheerfully picked up the reins and is driving us.  Just changing one letter of one word turned my thinking around and made me feel gratitude, which completely turned the day around.  Happily when we got there she was awake and totally different, which obviously is just a completely happy coincidence, but it reinforced something very powerful in me.

So this book comes highly recommended.

Kept.

The McFlannels See It Through by Helen W Pryde

I started my final book of the month only a couple of days ago, but I keep putting it down.

It's written with the speech spelt out as a Scottish person would say it, and this messes with my brain!!  I've noticed this before with books, they have to be in 'proper English' for me to really enjoy them.  

It's not as though I can't figure it out, I've obviously been with a Scotsman for over twenty years so I can quite easily decipher most of it, and the story seems to be going in a good direction.  But my poor tired brain is taking a Christmas break from this one.

Kept - to try again in the New Year.

So there might not have been much reading going on last month, but what I read was mostly very good and with three books staying on the bookshelves I get to read them again at a future date.

Sue xx

I would like to point out, that although I provide links to Amazon for all the books that I read each month, not all my books are bought from Amazon.  If they are, some of them were bought from the Used section rather than at full price.  You do not need to spend a fortune to read good books. 💖

I share the links so that you can learn more about the books that I write about for yourself, or read reviews from others that have read them.  Of course most of the books I talk about would also be available from your local library, and if you are very lucky you might even find them in charity or thrift shops. 

There are so many ways to bring books into your home if you love reading. 📚