What I love about Christmas

Belated Christmas greetings everyone, I hope you have all enjoyed the last few days.   The 10yr old, the boyf and I started ours with a party on Christmas Eve with the lovely B's and S's.  Thanks to a lack of boyf to rein me in (he worked so hard on the run up to the holidays), simple present swapping and sausage rolls (ok, maybe not the sausage rolls) turned into three courses of vegan/veggie fabulousness, thanks in huge part to the gorgeous Mrs B who found herself cooking the starter and saved the sprouts after I'd just thrown them all over the floor!  We gave Mr S his vintage Atari 2600 and I wish I'd had my camera when he opened it up... we also discovered that Mr B has serious Atari talents, and that Mrs B is slightly addicted to Friendship Bracelet makers!

Christmas morning was the usual chaos of paper and dobe and squeals of delight, particularly from yours truly who is typing this on her brand new (first time ever) laptop, thanks to her utterly delicious boyf!  The 10yr old was as pleased with her books and pj's as she was with her Kindle; Megs chewed everything she unwrapped and is now inseparable from her new bff Puss Cat, and whilst the boyf will have to wait for warmer weather to enjoy his main pressie, he has been sat reading his Bear Grylls, pretty much constantly since unwrapping it.

Since then we've all stopped waking up in time with our silenced alarm clocks and are catching up on our sleep,  have enjoyed a random mix of "spring" cleaning inside and out (I have finally got rid of my tape collection (yes I know!), all of our music and movies are now on one new storage drive and the chooks are happy in their spruced up run), Mission Impossible 4 (very good fun), gardening, painting the dog run (long overdue), odd jobs (the wobbly worktop in the kitchen is fixed, only 18 months after moving in!), cooking, walking, sitting, talking and simply enjoying, and, for me at least, slowly, oh so slowly, sorting through the junk on my old laptop and moving what's worth moving, to the new one.

Oh, and my first commission is finished... no more black twill for me for a while!  And sadly, no photos until the show in February.

It has, in all, been a lovely Christmas.  That perfect match of spoilt, but not too spoilt, good food, friends, family and proper relaxation, the kind that is active and fun, but restorative too.  New treasures have new homes and, in the process, our life is a little bit neater and certainly our house a little bit tidier!  I think that we all feel clearer, calmer, loved, happy and well in ourselves... what more could you want from Christmas.