Christmas roundup

I had a lovely Christmas with just Colin, Rachael and Luke.  My mum decided that she didn't want to come up this year and decided to spend Christmas at home on her own.  Our traditions include the kids opening their stockings from Father Christmas on our bed at 6.30am - although if they want to leave it later they can, I really don't mind!  After that it's showers, dress and down to open their 'big' Father Christmas presents.  Once this is done Colin makes breakfast for us all.  Chocolate pains for me and Luke, crumpets for Rachael and croissants for himself.  Once these are eaten it's time for teethbrushing and only then can all the gifts under the tree be opened.  Each year we take it in turn to choose presents from under the tree for each person to open then once each round is opened, the next person chooses another present for each person.

Rachael being the ripe old age of 12 now decided that she wanted to buy us each a present with her own money (usually she is given the money to do this).  Luke got a Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, Colin got a model car and I got a Tiny Treasured Diamond from Mill Hill.  I think that is probably the best present I have ever received as she went through my sewandso.com wishlist without my knowledge and chose it before getting Colin to order it for her.  Luke gave me the pair of Union Jack flag scissors that I ordered a while back but had forgotten about!  Colin bought me 3 pieces of Sparklies fabric, a LK santa chart and some stamps for my collection.  There were also other assorted bits and pieces.  I was very lucky.

On Christmas Eve we went to midnight mass - at 6pm.  The church was packed with standing room only.  The children always enjoy this as they know, and usually like, the hymns for it.  They found it terribly confusing though this time with the new order of the mass books and the old mass book with the readings etc in.  The readings and psalms were completely different to the book.  Looking around the church it wasn't just them that were confused though!

Onto stitching news...I have been working on the 2nd round of the RR still.  It should have been mailed weeks ago but with my cross stitch lamp bulb going, it has been hard to stitch.  There are loads of fractional stitches and it is on aida so I REALLY need my lamp for it.  I have now received the new bulb so hopefully will get it wrapped up in the next couple of days.  The next leg arrived today and is quite cute although looks like a hard chart to follow.  I think I will need to enlarge the chart a bit when I get to it.

I have signed up for Theme-a-licious over on Its all geek to me and have a page at the top with my plans for the year which I will be combining with my WIPocalypse stitching and hopefully make a lot of progress on WIPs throughout the year.

Today our washing machine gave up the ghost.  I went to get the washing out of the machine and found it all sopping wet having not spun.  I cursed and tried the spin cycle again - nothing!  The drum isn't spinning at all....grrrrr.  Phoned Colin to let him know - "Are you sure it's not working?"  Suffice to say it's a good job he was at work.  After looking at the cost to get someone out, we decided that it had proved to be good value and we would send it to washing machine heaven and get a new one.  Having spent the day researching, examining and removing powder drawers in the shop that I couldn't then get back in (well if I can't get it back in after I've cleaned it, it's no good) we have settled on an Indesit which seems a really good buy.  We will go back and order it tomorrow.

I've noticed a few new followers in the last few days.  Welcome and thank you for visiting!

Well that's it for now.  Happy New Year if I don't make it back here in the next couple of days.