The Christmas Basket

Yesterday we were at the wedding of our son and new daughter-in-law. Pictures will follow ASAP.

With a wedding in December and a couple who love Christmas  (their first dance was to "All I want for Christmas is you!) there were lots of festive themes going on and this is my lovely gift from the newly weds.

So pretty.................just hope I can keep it alive a bit longer than other poinsettias I've had!

Back soon, with Happy Photos
Sue

PS Co-incidentally, just after writing this, I came across the following on this months Home Farmer email

Care of Poinsettias

These are tropical plants so don’t leave them in a cold car when you’ve bought it whilst you do other shopping. Get it home immediately.
Place in a well-lit area near a window. It needs bright, indirect light for at least 6 hours a day.
Bright direct sun will fade the red leaves.
Avoid drafts and try to keep a regular temperature of 65-70⁰
The most common cause of fatality is over watering. Only water when dry and do not let them sit in water as this encourages mold and moss.
You do not need to feed your plant when in bloom. Once it’s finished blooming water sparingly and feed once a month

Just One Tradition

Just one Christmas Tradition here............... there has to be a copy of the Radio Times in the house ( as they would say on the Beeb......other TV. listings magazines are available................ but not as good!)

As soon as I spot it in the shops it comes home to be examined closely.

I'm always hopeful that there will be some gems among the repeats.

A quick glance through and this is what I spotted

The Strictly Come Dancing Final

Wild Tales From The Village

Call The Midwife

The Christmas Countryfile

A new Midsummer Murders

10 episodes of special alumni editions of University Challenge

The series finals of Countdown

Kirsties Handmade Christmas 

Countrywise

New series of Father Brown

Carols from Kings

Still Open All Hours

Jonathon Creek

Guy Martin Cycling Home for Christmas

 Of course some clash........... typical.........no clever recording type TV here, and some I shall probably miss as we will be out visiting.

From this you will see I like crime and quizzes and have the attention span of a gnat as almost  nothing here is longer than an hour!

Back Soon

Sue

The Christmas Post

All my cards are now winging their way around the country, Bath, Chesterfield, Colchester and other places in Essex, A windy Scottish island, Manchester, Birmingham and some closer to home in Suffolk too.

The very  local cards have gone in here

 How lucky we are to be able to post something and know that it will arrive ( usually anyway) and even if postage costs have gone up a lot it's still nice to send cards once a year.
 Some have arrived from various places too and a mystery parcel from the windy island .......thank you W 😊.

We went to see Col's cancer nurse specialist yesterday to find out what to expect next.
She said that Colin carries on with the tablets and once a week blood tests until early March, he may feel well, or if the Lymphoma increases too quickly he might not. Then he has another bone marrow sample.After that they decide when to do the donor stem cell transplant, which will take place at Addenbrookes hospital and he might need to be in for 5 - 8 weeks! .......Oh good grief! I see I will get to know the awful A14 between Stowmarket and Cambridge very well indeed.
 Seems to me only one thing is certain about this type of cancer............no one really knows exactly what's going to happen and when. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, keep calm and carry on!

Oh BTW do you remember that lovely NECKLACE which I said would need  altering with a shorter chain? Well Col had a brainwave and looked through the necklaces hanging in the charity shop, found one with a suitable clasp and links, snipped the relevant bits off the charity shop chain, made the lovely necklace chain shorter and with the help of small pliers and a bright light, fixed on clasp......et Voila! Cost £1.
 I didn't marry him just for his pretty face!

Back Soonish
Sue

Winter Walk

"I need a bit of nature" was what I said yesterday morning.

Col knew a walk he used to do when he worked as a bridge inspector and had to check the footbridges over a stream on the edge of Ipswich.

And the Christmassy photo for the 7th day of December..........Holly, with berries, we saw lots of bushes all round the walk

Much of the walk was on a board-walk built to go through boggy woodland, with a small river running through, then on heath land on the edge of a golf course. It was good to get away from pavements but all the way round we could still hear the traffic rushing along the A14.

Welcome to another new follower and thank you for comments yesterday.


Back Tomorrow........probably
Sue

Winter - an Anthology and a then a book journey

This is an interesting little book made up of wintery words in prose and poetry from many different writers, from the 16th century up to 2016. Most of the more recent authors have a connection to their local Wildlife Trust and the books are raising money for those trusts. At the end of the book is a paragraph about each author.

My favourite pieces were by the more well known country writers, some live or lived in Norfolk or Suffolk. Roger Deakin, Adrian Bell and of course Ronald Blythe. Another name I recognised was Clare Leighton who was an author and illustrator using wood engravings. I know we had her book Four Hedges back when we sold country books at shows. The piece by her in this book is from The Farmers Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry. That sounds good I thought so looked it up on Amazon..........£40 and upwards .........maybe not then! 


 Spring,Summer and Autumn editions of  anthologies also edited  by Melissa Harrison  exist although the library doesn't have them in stock - oddly. I shall be suggesting  them soon


Looking up "Winter" on Amazon lead me to find this
a debut novel about Father and Son farmers in Suffolk haunted by something that happened in the past. I've ordered it from the library although there are several people waiting.
Then I was reading Random Jottings post HERE and looked to see if the library had the book she mentioned ......Jeanette Winterson - Christmas Days. I found they didn't have it in stock so hopped back to Amazon to find when it was published and spotted this...

which is described as a "Full length narrative Christmas Poem, which takes us round the world at Christmas".
If ever covers sell books I bet these two would.
Sadly the Library hasn't got this either, I'm not sure I can suggest too many - might bankrupt them!


 Welcome to new follower Lorraine and thank you for Christmas card comments yesterday.
And I have to just say how sad to see Sue at Our New Life in the Country has finished blogging after so many years. Reading her blog kept me in touch with smallholding. Will I be able to keep going for as many years as Sue did. I'm at 3½, Sue did 8 - pretty good going.Wonder who's been going longest of all the blogs I read?

Back tomorrow
Sue

Christmas cards...........making and buying,sending and receiving.

I love receiving Christmas cards. I like to display them and enjoy for as long as possible.

I have two rules about buying cards -  they must be charity cards and they must not be full price. Hypercritical? Probably.

We send about 40 cards although not that many are posted. It's the only way we keep in touch with people from where we've lived in the past.

This year I'm writing in our new address and a note about Col's treatment.......it's taking an age, mainly because I keep putting off the actual doing.
I'm certainly not short of cards to write, I counted around 100, a few hand made and the rest from January sales or from car boot sales.

 Then there is the paper craft card making stuff - I could probably turn out another 50 or so easily, and I have some lovely 3D decoupage papers and card which I bought from Craft Creations 2 years ago, specially to make nice big cards for family.

Not forgetting cross-stitch - the opportunities are endless for that craft.

Notes to self

Buy NO cards in the January sales
Use the craft stuff to make family cards in 2017
Carry on stitching cards for friends for next Christmas

Colin has now been on the special tablets for 5 days, the only side effects so far are tiredness which could also be from finishing the steroids which he was on since coming out of hospital. Neither of us can remember exactly what the doctor said about the timescale of side effects so we will ask later in the week when we see the cancer nurse.

I hope something interesting happens today to photograph or my daily advent photos will grind to a halt!

Back Tomorrow.............or not, depends
Sue

There are Christmas Fayres and then there are Christmas Fayres

Saturday at 11am we strolled round the corner to the Catholic Primary school for their Christmas Fayre and 5 minutes later we strolled home again as there was almost nothing there. A few games for children, someone selling Avon and someone else selling Usbourne books and that was about it and hardly any people.

At 1.45 we strolled half a mile round 5 corners to go to Castle Hill Church for another Christmas Fayre. It was packed loads of stalls and people

and there was a room with tables covered with BOOKS............ Oh great joy

Colin came home with a fruit cake and I came home with these

I'm not a great jewellery fan, rings yes all the time, necklaces rarely. But I just loved the different stones in this. I need to find a new shorter chain with a clasp to be able to wear it as this one doesn't undo and it's too long unless you are totally flat chested!
Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm is another British Library Crime Classic, one of the few that the library haven't got. ( I filled in the suggestion form  for several  a couple of months ago but forgot this one).
50p for the book and £1 for the necklace, a nice walk home for tea and cake and all is well with my world😊😊

Back Soon
Sue