A New Dawn, A New Day

Well, that was one fabulous Christmas and I'm quite sad that it has all come to an end.
Being somebody who does not enjoy the stress induced panic attacks of last minute shopping, all of my shopping was completed by the end of November.  This left me all of December to relax and enjoy the important family traditions that make the most beautiful of memories.  And Oh Boy did we have a busy month, starting with the kids singing in a national choir with 3000 other children in Dublin.  We decided to stay over that weekend and had our first clumsy attempts at ice skating, heading home with sore bottoms and faces that ached from laughing.
We spent lovely afternoons baking with my mother (which we don't do near often enough), making decorations for the tree and knitting gifts for some relations.  There was the nativity play and the end of term play too.  Lucy missed the latter because she had both her big toenails removed just 5 days before Christmas.  She cried in the doctor's surgery when she found out about this, not because she was scared of getting the surgery but because she had the lead in the school play and would not be fit to attend.

Christmas week was just as relaxing.  Full of lazy mornings watching tv with the kids, going for walks in the afternoon and knitting while listening to my favourite audiobooks.  I've thoroughly enjoyed getting back to my needles after hooking for the past year.  I hadn't realised just how much I had missed them.  Now I have a long list of makes just waiting to be cast on.
I even managed to get out a few times over the holidays with my Hubby, having dinner with friends and going out on New Years Eve for the first time in 10 years!! To wind up the season, last weekend there was a huge party for my Hubby's 40th birthday and I made the most of the night and boogied my (not so little) behind off.  It was such great fun with lots of laughter and long chats people there that I hadn't seen for a while.

Looking back over the last month has made me realise that major changes need to be made in my life.  The past year I became too tied to my little hidey hole, the house, reluctant to come out more than once a week and quite happy to stay that way.  But I now see that even though I might be content with this, I've been missing far to much of the life that is going on without me.  I love meeting people, whether they are old friends or new ones and I'm never going to do that while I'm stuck here in my rut.
My resolution for this year is simply to get out of the house more. To meet up with friends, go out for dinner, go shopping or simply to go for a walk with the dog.  I want to fill my day the best that my body allows and be able to go to bed at night tired and satisfied that another day has not been wasted.
So for me this is a new start, a new dawn and a new day.  And who knows just where this tiny little change will bring me?

Hope to catch up with you all very soon,
Rosie xx

Have You Guessed What It Is Yet?

One Christmas Eve I sat on our sitting room for a half an hour wrapping this little fella.  It was a present for my son from me and I just knew that he'd get such a kick out of seeing it packaged off like this.  And i was right too.  It was the first present that he ran to on Christmas morning, before he even looked at what Santa had brought him.  He was delighted but informed me that I was such a wally.  Me, I think it's a work of art myself.

Christmas here was a hectic one.  My mother, brother and his girlfriend all came out on Christmas day for dinner.  It's been a long time since I've made a big meal for a few people and even though it was hard work, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was lovely seeing a crowd around the dinner table again.

Well the New Year is here and I'm not generally one for making resolutions but this year I've decided that I will.  For 2013 I'm going to take better care of myself.....stop the ciggies, which I started again after being off them for 7 years, try and exercise as much as I'm able and to give up on all the sweet treats which is probably my biggest downfall.  So to end 2012 I had two little glasses of wine with my dinner and two massive slices of panettone for dessert.  But unfortunately justice being served, I went to bed five minutes past midnight with two headache tablets and woeful indigestion.  No fair!  No fun for Rosie at all!

Finally I just want to wish each and every one of you a very Happy New Year and I hope that it brings you your every wish and the best of health.

Lots of love,
Rosie xx

A Late Start To Advent

Unfortunately I missed the start of Advent because I was away.  But the children were very understanding and I made sure that I was home on time to write their letters to St. Nicholas.

It is wonderful how traditions evolve from when you were a child yourself to when you have your own little family.  As a child we always celebrated St. Nicholas' day on 6th December.  We would  always wake up to plates of colourful foil wrapped chocolate Santas or coins.  Now with my children, on the night of 5th we write to St. Nicholas with their wish list for Christmas morning and leave them out with a glass of milk, some cookies and an apple or two for Rudolf.  As soon as they are finished getting the table ready, the kids rush up to bed so that they are asleep before the big man himself appears in the house and rings the Christmas bell on the landing.  This year they woke up to a sewing kit each and a small plate of treats.  This for our family marks the beginning of Christmas.

We did not finish the wreath until the second Sunday of Advent.  Growing up there was always a wreath for Advent and I loved the smell of the candles burning.  People always differ on the candle colours but my German father always said that there should be three red and one purple one for the fourth Sunday.  Hence the mismatched shapes.

 Just before Advent each year my father travelled to Germany and in his case when he returned there was always an Advent calendar for each of us.  The little cardboard ones and I would hang it up on my bedroom wall and open a window each day.
But now with my children we have our Advent calendar on the stairs.  We spend a long afternoon decorating it with holly, pine cones, cinnamon, lights and ribbons.  Patrick and Lucy each hang their own little red bag from the side. Two of Santa's Elves sit in the evergreen trees in front of our house and watch to see if they go to bed on time and behave well during the day.  If the have, then when they awake the next morning they will find that the Elves have come in and left a little chocolate sweet in each of their bags.
Christmas with the kids is so magical.  I just love it!

So Much To Do......

If I'm honest I don't really know what I'm at these days.  Christmas is coming and there is a lot of crafting to be done.  I'm full of ideas for presents and decorations for the house and I still haven't got my mincemeat made for my mince pies.  My problem is that I just don't know where to start!  And another of my big problems is that I've got a habit of starting a tonne of projects all at the same time and never seem to get anything finished.  I get too bored doing one project at a time and it's only been a few times that I've managed it.  And there are so many beautiful patterns out there to inspire me and tempt me to cast on a fresh set of stitches.
I do love that great feeling of achievement I get when I see a project finished.  It's something that I don't get from anything else.  I like to sit down to a nice meal that I've cooked or a scrumptious cake but I never feel like jumping around and shouting out the window, "look what I've made".  I can clean the house and do all my chores until the house gleams but I don't ever want to walk proudly into my knitting group wearing a nice Mr. Muscle shiny bathtub now do I?
Tomorrow I'm going to be brave and sit down with my dear little notepad and make my Christmas list (not for Santa...that one will come later on St. Nicholas' Day.  Hopefully he'll listen this year.)
The most important jobs first.  Sewing during the day because I can knit at night and when the kids are doing their homework.  I'm heading to Germany at the end of this month with my mother to visit the big bro.  We are going for a week so that is going to take more time off me.  And then when we get back, advent will have started.  And advent is such a big thing here in this house for us.  The stairs have to be decorated and small sweet bags hung out for Santa's elves to fill for the kids if they have been good that day.
Ahhhh I think I'm going to go mad.  But if I'm really honest with myself, I'm looking forward to Chrimbo this year for the first time in a long long time.  I'm more relaxed in myself.  More secure and I've finally accepted my condition.  As somebody once told me "it is possible to find happiness in acceptance".

Another promise I'm making to myself is that I want to take care of my blog properly and update it more often.  Every time I sit down on the sofa and take my laptop out, my dog Molly, jumps up beside me and lies right across the keyboard, nudging me and giving me those endearing eyes that say "please tickle my belly".  And if that wasn't bad enough, one of my cats, Nina, has a habit of sitting on the back of the couch behind me rubbing my head with her paw!
I often sign on to blogger land intending to write a post but I get so distracted by everybody elses beautiful pages that I spend all my time reading them and before I know it, it's already bed time.
So I'm hoping that with all the crafting I'll be doing over the next two months, I'll definitely be posting more news.  And hopefully there'll be some fab pictures from Munich and Salzburg.

Thanks for listening to my mindless rambling,
Rosie xx

PS  Can anybody out there help me please?  Whenever I have found new blogs that I would like to follow, I would click on the Google Follow This Blog button and that blog would automatically pop up on my reading list.  But the last few times that I did that, I had to copy and paste the address into my reading list.  Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong here?