Your Day (apart from gardening) - what took place? 2023

I've been making Christmas cards, and birthday cards for a friend's two dogs (she always sends Bella a card so I feel I have to send ones to her dogs ... and budgie - and I'm making them this year)
I've done paintings of dogs for the birthday cards, and a Teddy bear and snowman for the Christmas cards.

Anyway, I arranged the photos on coloured backgrounds ready to print, and my computer has labelled them 'Dog Card' and 'Teddy Chr. Card'
How does it know ??

Mind you it also labelled the snowman 'Teddy Chr card'

 

All I've done is had a couple of walks around both of the blocks, I try to do some walking if I cant do much in the garden due to the weather.
Mind you dodging some of the rubbish piling up on the pavement in places is becoming beyond a joke, fridges, kids toys, old carpets, kitchen cabinets I could go on, mostly outside the same houses all the time and they assume once outside of their neglected garden its not their problem anymore.
Then you wonder why I dont like "people".

 

Made the baked potatoes with sweetcorn and bacon, put them in the freezer and I'll take out what i need for Christmas. But after the big day, have 2 each.

Made some for the boys but plain mashed potato, they'll have 1 between them.

 

Had an "exchange of views' with my UK MP today. Let's just say that I'm not on his Christmas card list any more.

 

I've been printing my home made Christmas cards ...
I needed 12 'English version' Snowman cards so I printed 12 sheets.
THEN I realised there are two cards on a sheet, so I've got twice as many as I need

I was never any good at maths !

They'll come for next year, if I can remember where I put them.

 

Cold water tap in kitchen stopped working. Gargantuan effort to get it working again. Half of kitchen dismantled in the process.. I

 

trying to Christmas up the place. Holiday type covers for certain areas, pillows, throws etc. some cleaning. I am tired.

 

@Drahcir , you should take up a hobby before it's too late! How about knitting? Doing a complicated pattern is a bit like playing Tetris, it will come to your dreams.

Enjoying the brisk -3 temperatures (the kind of weather when snow stays white ) I have done some wintry things. Freeze drying laundry is great way to get thick jeans and so on squeaky dry quickly.

Sadly, the temperatures rose above freezing overnight so when I took the load indoors to sublimate, instead of bei9ng frozen stiff it was soaking wet and cold And I had boasted about this Finnish tradition to my doubting Thomas(ina) of a daughter all day

Found 700g of diced beef reduced to clear in Lidl and now we have about 15 portions of lovely meat stew waiting for another blast of cooking until the meat starts to break up. Wonderful... and freezes well. It's also easy to do up for change, some pickled gherkins and sour cream turn it to Stroganoff and extra smoked paprika plus bell pepper cubes into Gulash.

Christmas presents for family have been wrapped up and are ready to be UPSsed over. Also workplace Pirate Santa gift is wrapped in a neat box with a large red bow and very unpolitically correct poem

Pirate Santa is a game where everyone takes a number and the selects and unwraps a present in turn. You can choose to keep your present or swap it to any of the previously taken presents, and person number one gets the last decision when everyone has their gift.

It's great fun, max price is £5 and the sillier the present is, the better. Last time I bought five dotty showercaps. Unsurprisingly, nobody stole them so the original picker was stuck with them.

This year it's a wonderful honking hog (a dog toy), bar of nougat and a tag poem referring to infinite oral pleasures. Yes I'm that childish

 

I remember Lincolnshire winter days like that, when I was growing up.
Don't get them down here in "sunny"? Paignton.

 

Loungewear discoveries. (Clearly, I have a day off from work).

In olden days, I used to wear tatty trackie bottoms at home but apparently trackie bottoms are now only worn by ladies named after a bubbly wine who are no longer in their 30's or rappers who pair their trackies with a solid gold necklace weighting a pound and a Ferrari.

For us mere mortals, it's "loungewear" apparently.

Anyways, my favourite "loungewear" pants needed a wash so I donned a pair of good intentions yoga pants (the good intention was to take classes to improve my posture, stamina and whatever else needs improving, apparently) but they leave my ankles fashionably bare. Not great in a cold house.

So, the time lord whipped his wand out and I borrowed legwarmers from The Baby who has a stash from when they became fashionable in 2020 after lying low for 40 years when I had a stash of them in Fuchsia and oh-so-new- neon colours

The interesting find is that legwarmers actually warm legs

The Baby finds my wardrobe discoveries very entertaining and has offered to lend me thick, over-knee socks with a choice between a kitten pattern or pink bows-and pearls- design.

Thank goodness its back to office tomorrow

 

Better late than never..

We spent an enjoyable weekend up in London, unfortunately the weather wasn't that good.

The top of The Shard remained hidden from view all day.


We browsed the little Christmas Market set up in Trafalgar Square before going on to visit The National Gallery.







Here are two relevant paintings for you all to enjoy.




Finally.. Merry Christmas !!

 

Spent the last weekend doing the Christmas decorations.

 

I like your snow scene in the conservatory Logan. J has put some white lights up in the lounge and turned the coloured lights on out front of the house. Pic from last year ...

 

No decs here for us for the 2nd year running as we're away. I find them claustrophobic and can't wait to pack them away.