Getting my Christmas skates on

I am so far behind with anything Christmassy this year, I think all my energy and attention went into having a student with me over the past couple of weeks and playing catch up with my actual work and then of course all the time and energy I put into the interview for my new job. This week also saw the beginnings of the 3 Christmas dinner's I'm going to this year before the end of next week, secret Santa buying and wrapping....it's all too much!

I am a simple girl with plain principles, Christmas is about my joy in the birth of Jesus Christ my Saviour rather than all the extra commercial fluff. I'm not a bah humbug girl though and do indulge in getting festive and decking the halls with holly... I live with a very enthusiastic 11 year old what more can I say :0)


Do you like my first 2 photo's? I mentioned in my last post that I was going with a couple of friends to a festive florist feast last Tuesday night. I have never considered floral decorations and it was fun to see what he made, all these amazing funky decorations, wreaths and bouquets. It was fascinating for some-one like me who doesn't own an oasis! I liked the idea of digging out a space in a lemon for a tea-light candle, popping a kebab stick in the other end and then sticking it into the oasis. 

   
More than anything it gave me great pleasure to see that the nursery where he got all his flowers / greenery from (Lime Cross Nursery) provided fair trade Protea's the National Flower of my beautiful home country South Africa. I was especially pleased when my raffle ticket at the end was pulled out and I won the arrangement in the 2nd photo with 2 Protea's in it and shrubbery, holly and lovely berries I had plans for...

Back in the Summer a friend made me something from one of her Wisteria's she was chopping back and I have waited patiently for the festive season to arrive to use it.

Yes you have probably guessed it, I decided for the first time ever to make a Christmas Wreath for our front door. Andy wasn't too sure about this idea, I think he associates a wreath with funerals... Having grown up in sunny SA we never had a wreath and 9 times out of 10 we would be in a tent camping at Christmas doing this...

So, with this being my 15th Christmas in the UK I decided it was high time to be inspired by the wreath's around the neighbourhood and make one of my own. Alice and I got busy making this morning and this is what it turned out like.

I'm thinking it looks quite sweet especially with the fact that this has cost me the princely sum of £2.75 to make. 

 Do you like my little ric-rac soldier boy? I found him for 10p in a Charity Shop and the ric rac my lovely mum sent to me from SA. The ivy leaves and berries here are pretend ones that I picked up at a craft fair for 50p. I've never bought pretend leaves and berries before and used to be such a snob about these but age has chilled me out somewhat, thank goodness!

Three sparkly baubles 10p in a Charity shop were sewn onto the red ribbon which was the most expensive being £1.70 from a local haberdashery shop.

As you can see I used bits and bobs from the floral arrangement I won and hope these stay healthy/green until Christmas day. I think if we have crazy windy rainy weather like we did on Thursday I will have to bring it in. 

Andy seems to have changed his mind which I'm pleased with and hopefully this can say Merry Christmas to all passer's by from us in our wee house. 

I must also say a sweet thank you to Helen from Handbags by Helen for her lovely Christmas Charity Swap I received in the post at the end of the week. The idea came from Lakota and her great blog 

Faith Hope and Charity Shopping. Thanks so much Lakota for organising this, good fun having a little gifts come through the pos before Christmas. Poor Helen is having to put up with my inefficiency and is only going to receive my parcel on Monday. Thanks for being so patient Helen! We have had great fun making the paper chains and squeezing the cheeky monkey's tummy xox


Other than that our beautiful Alice has been eager beaver in putting up her pink Woolworths tree we bought for her about 5 years ago. Poor child is desperate for us to get our home tree up... hopefully this week or next weekend.

I did however make some more festive decorating attempts last night with my twiggy tree I use for Christmas and Easter and it felt good and cosy to put together.

I hope you are having fun making / putting up your decorations this festive season. Sending you warm wishes this chilly weekend and cool breezes if you are having beautiful hot sunnyshine weather xox

Hugs of the woolly kind

Dearest fellow bloggers


Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for all your warm wishes and congratulations on my new job. You are all so very generous and warm about my posts and I really appreciate each and very comment, it still amazes me how people will want to read my blog. Thank you all so very much and now let me show you my finished mug-huggers I've made for Alice's year 6 teachers. This is the first year she has had a job-share of two part time teachers and we were a little concerned about continuity of care and teaching with this but it really has been a blessing and we now have two more important people in our little girl's lives. 


Alice loves school to say the least, she is a social butterfly and thrives on seeing her contemporaries but is also much to our delight a diligent learner and gets a kick out of achieving. Long may it last... oh no we have the dark tunnel of teenage years around the corner!


Anyhow, on with the crochet delights... 

We decided to buy a Lindt Father Christmas and some gold chocolate coins to pop in the mug and I love the way they are just peeping out. This crochet pattern is from Nicky Trench's book, Cute and Easy Crochet found here. I don't have a copy of this book but managed to borrow it from a friend and think it's a great little book with easy beginner through to more complicated, advanced crochet patterns in it.

I then got a piece of felt from my stash and embroidered attempted to embroider their names on the felted label. I like hand stitching, it's something I'd like to get good at and do more of really.

All in all i am happy with how they have turned out and it was fun getting Alice to choose a little ceramic hand-made button from my precious/slightly more expensive button stash. I hope they like them, it was a cheap but meaningful way to say thanks to both her teacher's for all they do for Alice. The mugs cost £1.00 in Next in the UK, not a shop I normally go into but little miss wanted a browse and I was happy to find these mugs. Wool was Debbie Bliss DK from my stash and chocs bought at the supermarket.

I don't know why but I quite like the look of this Santa and thought he deserved a photo of his own!

If you want some more mug hug inspiration pop over to Jacquie's super duper Bunny Mummy blog for more cheery mug hugging. I like that she has filled her mugs with pretty wrapped chocs xox Happiness is a cuppa and a chocolate treat.

Other than allowing my heart to skip an excited beat when  remember about my new job, I've been playing with creamy alpaca wool for Alice's finger-less gloves Christmas hand-made treat, felt flower playing and hemp twine which I was really pleased to find.


I've got 3 secret Santa's to buy/make for in the next week (2 work parties and one with friends), a blog Christmas swap to send and still need to get my skates on with my internet ordering....despite all of this I have been invited to a fun and funky Christmas floral display/DIY type of workshop this evening and am rally looking forward to it. I've decided to make a Christmas wreath for the first time this year and am hoping to get some inspiration.


I'll say cheerio with this photo I took of a wreath in Hastings Old town on the weekend... all i want for Christmas is a purple door for Christmas please :0)

See you all soon xox

  

A gift

I don't know if any of you lovelies remember when I said a few weeks ago (about 8 or so) that I had some big life changing things that I had to give some serious thought to? Well, the thing is that I felt it was time to move forward with my Career as a Dietitian. I've specialised in Neuro-science for the past 9 years and felt like I had reached a plateau of sorts. I felt itchy for some new challenges and after lots of careful thought, discussing with Andy my wonderful husband and Alice and a huge amount of prayer I felt that the decision to apply for a new post in another very specilised area of Nutrition and Dietetics was the way forward.


I was over the moon when I was short listed and 2 weeks ago was offered an interview on 2/12/11. It's been a long long time since I felt this nervous and petrified about doing an interview with a presentation on how I would implement national rehabilitation pathways locally, what challenges I would have and how I would overcome them.

  
I don't think I've worked this hard since I was at University in the late 1980's researching all the latest evidence and national department of health initiatives to address this area of medicine. 

It kept me up late at night, thinking, considering all the questions and potential answers. It gave me drive and purpose over and above my current job (which by the way is amazing and I work with the best-est people ever, it will be hard to say goodbye) something meaningful was metamorphosing again. It felt right and it felt good.

My interview lasted 1hour and 10min and I came out on an "interview high" if there is such a thing?! I desperately didn't want to feel too confident and knew that I had a 1 in 6 chance of getting it. I was told that If the interview panel was able to they would have an outcome at the end of Friday otherwise we would have to wait till Monday. 

My mobile phone rang at 16h48 and my heart skipped a double beat. It was like sssssssssssslllllllllooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

motion when I heard the words..."we would like to offer you the position of Macmillan Specialist Dietitian". There was nothing more for me to do than sob to release my joy and emotions. 

Oh happy happy day! I've needed the weekend for it to sink in, to ride my roller coaster of emotions and get down on my knees in thanks. 

I hope you don't read this and think gosh, a bit of a dramatic blog post! It's just that working with people throughout their Cancer Journey is my D*R*E*A*M job and I feel so so so privileged and humble to have been chosen for this position and wanted to log these feelings and thoughts for me to reflect on one day way down the line and I start to get the "itch" again :0)

I feel as though my ship truly has come in and with 21 years of dietetic experience under my belt it's time to come home xox 

Wow, what a wonderful gift has been bestowed on me and I can't wait to get started!

Thanks so much for stopping and reading my thoughts.

Hoping your week takes you sailing too xox 

  

Reasons to be cheerful and how to make cheap and cheerful Christmas gifts!

It's that time of the week again when i like to stop and reflect on all my reasons to be cheerful despite the heavy non-stop raining grey skies up above. It did make me smile this morning when the radio happily reported that there would be the occasional rainfall! If you would like to take part in Reasons to be cheerful pop over see Penny of Planet Penny's blog here and share your reasons to be cheerful.


Do you like my photo of the red hydrangea? I was pleasantly surprised to see this the other day, I would have thought that most hydangea's would have died by this time of the year. I thought it looked so pretty and festive for the beginning of December.


Alice surprised me with her festive snowflake garland she made on the weekend, she decided it was time to start "blinging up" her room with Christmas decorations. They did make me smile and I was impressed with her reasonably tasteful take on bling :0)

A very BIG and special reason to be cheerful today when i got home from work was to find this little fella all neatly wrapped up in a parcel waiting for me.... I couldn't contain my excitement when I saw him. 

Oh my goodness, thank you so much Penny for the sweetest most lovely needle felted robin. I ADORE him and will treasure him forever. Penny sells these sweet birds amongst all her other makes on her Folksy shop here and are really reasonably priced considering all the hard work put into them. Go and have a look for yourself, I promise it's worth it xox


I love his little claws... just perfect (sorry about the quality of this photo, no natural light available today)

Lastly, I wanted to share my cheap and cheerful Christmas mini-gift makes with you. You might like to do this with your kids if you have time. My inspiration comes from the lovely Victoria of Yarn around hook blog found here. She used microwave / air dry fimo for her decorations but I couldn't find any locally so I chose das. I bought 500g for £2.55 in my local art supply store and liked that it is child friendly as I thought it would be a bit of fun for Alice and I to make these together. So here's what we did:-

1. Roll out your soft das on a flat surface. I used our kitchen floor (not ideal if you have a sore back!) and placed some kitchen cling film on the floor to ensure I didn't have to scratch clay off the floor! An everyday rolling pin is perfect for this. I borrowed the two wooden stick/panels from Alice's art teacher as I wanted my clay to be level but it's not that hard to get it level without these so they are not completely necessary.

2. Pull out your cookie cutters, preferably festive Christmas ones, but it really doesn't matter.

3. Find some cotton doilies for next to nothing in your local charity shop. Or if you're feeling very inspired hook some up for yourself to use. I found 6 for 10p in a Christmas fare last year!

4. Pop a doily or 2 on top of the das clay and roll over it so it becomes imprinted on the clay

5. Now this is when the fun begins, pull your imprinted doily off and see what you made.

6. Get your cookie cutter and have fun choosing which part of the pattern you want to cut out and get cutting

Of course you can always have your own sweet angel help you with the cutting :0)

7. I then used a straw to make a little hole for eventually putting string through.

And voila you have a whole lot of pretty handmade cheap and cheerful Christmas tree or parcel decorations for under 3 pounds!

These can of course be painted by little hands or just put a layer of PVA glue on them to seal them a little. We might even add some PVA and glitter to make them sparkle too.

Another thing you can use is any stamps you may have at home to imprint these on the clay...

We used these and they turned out great.

 Perfect addition to your gifts this festive season too.

Thanks for popping by I do hope you have your own reasons to be cheerful too xox