Weekend Update: Christmas Checklist

Checking Off:

Gift Shopping

Wrapping

Send Cards

Lights and Garlands

Outside Lights

Advent Calendar

Nativity

Christmas Village

Ballet

Christmas Parade

Christmas Tree

Still To Do:

Visit Longwood Gardens (tonight, members only!)

See Christmas Lights at Herrs

(the potato chip factory puts on a lights display, no Canterbury, but it's pretty)

Make Christmas Cookies

Gingerbread Men

Make Reindeer Food

Watch Elf

Plan Christmas Eve Dinner

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!!!

my weekend: the highlights

Two long lie-ins
Saturday dinner and Sunday lunch out
Concert in Canterbury Cathedral, especially hearing Justin Hayward sing Nights in White Satin and Forever Autumn. 
A glass of wine and a  chat with a friend in front of a roaring real fire
A new camera! I am not a squeeing person, but I might just have to do a little one. Squee!

Just Now: Thursday evening

 

Current time:  6.20pm. Cold, tired, hungry. The Prof has to work late this evening, I am waiting for him to come home with a takeaway.

In my glass:  no glass, can of Coke Zero. 

In my belly:  toast, yoghurt, banana, apple. It's been a picky kind of day. 

In my ears: the wind howling outside, and various crashes which are probably plant pots and the bin being blown over. I'm not going out there to check. 

Out the window: cold, dark, wind. Good reason to be snuggled up on the sofa here.

On the editor: The pictures I took in Canterbury on Monday evening.

Last watched: a programme I had taped, I have several waiting to watch, hints on taking better photographs. I must get over my indecision as to which brand and model and get myself that big girl's camera. It's difficult, you know? I do all this research online but half the time I don't understand what the various features even are. I need to just stop overthinking and pick a camera already. I would like it before Christmas, but with everything else I don't know if I will. 

Feeling good about: oh, that's a struggle. Christmas, I guess, but it's hard to find the enthusiasm at the moment. 

Feeling bad about:  Feeling overwhelmed and exhausted the last few days, once again I have overdone things and have to wait to feel better. Sometimes the worst is not knowing how long for. 

By my bedside: A sadly neglected Simple Abundance and Romancing the Ordinary. 

Making me think:  Oh, I've not time to think!

Just Now: Thursday Night, Exhausted

Current time:  9:28 p.m.  I was going to have myself in bed by 8:30 or 9:00 as I've not gone to bed before 11:00 one night this week, but I see already I'm not going to make that.

In my glass:  Nothing,  I was going to make a cuppa, but decided not too, didn't feel like getting up to pee four times before I went to sleep.

In my belly:  Popcorn, it's what's for dinner.  The girls were at their Dad's, I had an hour and a half before they returned.  I chose an hour bath and popcorn for dinner.

In my ears:  "Beautiful Butterfly"  Innais. I have my yoga channel on Pandora, but I'm in bed.

Out the window: Coldness.  December has finally arrived.  We could see our breath outside tonight for the first time.  Now just some snow for Christmas.

On the editor: Nothing.  I've taken no photos this week since the quick grabs this past weekend.  There has been.....no....time.  This photo I scrolled through and found.  I kind of really like it.  They are potholders sitting on my parent's wood stove I took last time I was there.

Last watched:   The Office, the American version.  Believe it or not I've never seen the British version.  I quit watching it for a few years, but this year I think it's reclaiming itself.

Feeling good about:  Do I say it again, and again, and again.  I'm driving them crazy at work. CHRISTMAS, CHRISTMAS, CHRISTMAS

Feeling bad about:  My time.  I have none.  There's schoolwork, and housework and well, work-work, and then the girls started Taekwondo practice three times a week, and then there is CHRISTMAS.  I am mad, stark, raving, like a lunatic mad right now.

By my bedside:  Read?  Are you kidding?  Actually, I'm reading Karelyn Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban right now, so it's by the side of my bed.  Half a chapter each night.

Making me think:  I think that word I was searching for.  My word for 2012, might need to be balance.

Here And There: Out My Window

Another crazy, gloomy, blustery, dark, rainy day. So if I tried to post photos for you out my windows this week they would all look like gray black blurs.  So I've tried to grab some that I already had.

Below is the view from my kitchen window.  I always wanted a window above my sink when I lived in my previous home.  This window looks out on the garage, but still I love having all that light streaming in on me and any herbs I set in the window.

This is the view out my bedroom window.  It looks out over the field.

This is a photo of the same field but closer up.  These are my neighbors across the street.  In the summertime I sit on the front porch and watch them walk up from the field at night.

This is the same view from downstairs.  I hate that I can't get a good photo of the field without the electrical wires.

This would be what you would see if you looked out the back dining room window.  This is the back yard.  We are incredibly blessed that we have this beautiful yard with a woods bordering it.  When I got divorced I feared having to walk up to a cheap store-top apartment with no green or no yard for the girls to run around in.  I pictured having to take them to parks for that.  My grandparents gave us an amazing blessing by allowing us to live on this little place by them.

This is the view out the side dining room window.  That's my Grandmother's birch tree last winter.  When they took down the old small house my Great-Grandparents, her parents, lived in and built this new house, she hoped so much that they wouldn't have to take the birch tree down.  Luckily they didn't.

Here's my favorite view though.  This is the view out my Grandmother's kitchen window. That is my other   kitchen window you see in the background. We can look out our kitchen windows and see each other.

Inspiration Day: Believe

I know I am supposed to be doing my Here and There today, but it's been severely dark and gloomy here the last day or so and no good photos coming from out my window, so I changed it up and posted my inspiration today instead.

I like this one. It made me smile tonight. I hope it does the same for you.

Here and There: from my window

This is the view from the living room window at the front of the house. Mostly you can see my privet hedge, which is original to the house and been growing there since the 1930s or so. I keep it fairly high because it stops people walking past from looking in the front window. The houses opposite are quite close, the road is very narrow, I have seen those lovely wide streets on American films! The cars you can just see are parked in the front gardens, many people make their front garden into off-street parking as it's difficult to park here. The Prof often has to park right down the street, or even in the next.

This was taken from the side window at the top of our stairs. It's rubbish day today, so you can see there are some bins in the street. Children play on the green there, the sign on the right says 'No ball games', though I have spent many summer afternoons having a football repeatedly thump the side of my house. 
The branches you can just see at the bottom of the picture are the pyracantha which grows up my side fence and badly needs cutting back a bit! Not going to happen in this cold weather.

Ours is a little house with a little garden. The end of the garden you can see, about two feet beyond the blue pot. This is taken from my back step - I would have taken it through the window of the back door but the awful truth is that the glass is too dirty. From the back step to the end of the garden is about fifteen paces, and the garden is triangular. I know over there you call your gardens yards, well here it's a garden if it's grass and a yard if it's concrete so really mine's a yard, I just refuse to call it one. At the moment it's all quite barren out here, in the spring and summer  the Virginia creeper on the left fence is lovely, though every year just to be awkward it sheds all its leaves before they turn properly red. Most years I do my best in the summer to make it look and feel more like a garden, with pots of flowers. This year was so busy, I didn't do it but I have high hopes for next year. I painted my bench this year, it needs redoing because it got rained on before it was dry and the paint got all pitted, so there's a job for the spring.


I'm glad at least the sun was shining for my little urban photographs. Tomorrow you are going to make me jealous with your pictures of the grass and trees surrounding your house.