Done

As ever my minimal Christmas preparation has been hurried and stressful, switching from relaxed Italian mode to full on UK festive season is always hard, its quite shocking to return late November to see the excess of consumerism already underway.  Equally my ambitious knitting schedule is never achieved, mostly socks and none of the pretty scarves I planned, but I did manage a couple of little jumpers for newly born Harry,  His Dad is a keen cricket player and fan so the cream one is for match days.

As ever Mr FF took some persuading to put up the lights, he bought some new ones this year and despite the pack saying there was about a metre of light, there were miles and miles.  I had to point out that though they looked lovely reflecting off the marble work tops this just wasn't practical, they are now strung prettily round the dining area of the kitchen which we have renamed Santa's grotto.

My brother and sister in law kindly did the present exchange earlier last week, which was a great help and lovely to see them here.  Val brought me a couple of fresh greenery arrangements so my hall is suitably decked and my brother stocked us up with veg from his garden.  

We are looking forward to a quiet time, we already have the top floor of our building to ourselves, with enough of what we need.  I hope you have a wonderful time and your Christmas wishes all come true.  

My usual seasonal rant

I'm doing my best with to deal with Christmas.  Last week Mr FF and I helped to put up the large tree and decorations in our communal hallway, bit early if you ask me but really they needed to be done before our in house Christmas lunch.  I attended the latter and stayed the course till around 10 pm.  
I've written the cards, wrapped the overseas packages.  It's not going too badly.  After 6 months in Italy I have lots of socks in the gift department even though I haven't made the various scarves and gloves I imagined I would.  

Mr FF has been busy attending his walking groups lunches, coming home wearing irritating paper hats.  What is it with crackers, we had them at the in house lunch and when I helped to tidy later I found a large selection of stupid plastic items left on the tables plus all the paper debris, I'm pleased to say not many hats were worn.  Such a waste of money, I imagine said crackers had been shipped from China to end up in landfill.   

Much nicer that one of our resident ladies had made table decorations mostly  sourced from our communal garden which we were allowed to bring home, a week later mine looks good.

Its cold outside, 1 degree, but not too snowy here, hope you are coping and cosy.  I may venture out later if there aren't too many Christmas tunes in the shops.