So with Christmas all around at the moment I thought I would start on my Christmas Books that are sitting on my TBR shelf! I picked this one up as I loved the colour. Do you ever choose a book by its cover? I know you are not supposed to but it does make a difference to me and so far I have not been too far wrong with the books I pick this way!
Sophie receives a beautifully bound book in a surprise package but has no idea who it is from. She begins to investigate who sent it and in so doing comes across Harry, who has returned to the village from London to his home which is a crumbling manor house.
Under wintry skies and a sprinkling of snow the village takes on a Christmas feel and Sophie and Harry begin to find out their separate stories and whether they can become one story.
As you can tell from the above it is a Christmas love story and just the right thing to read at this time. I am very tired of the news at the moment and particularly all the doom and gloom so I have even stopped listening to the news now and quite happily playing my Christmas music!!! I have only just started the book but am loving it so far.
I have quite a lot of Christmas books on my TBR so after this I will be starting another. One of them is a Murder at Christmas book which I will love reading!
Sorry this is late and also on Sunday but as I say the days and weeks have been flying by!!! Happy Sunday everyone.
I have noticed on Instagram, which is the only social media I take part in, is that so many people have already put their Christmas decorations up! Obviously they have artifical trees but we as a family and my Parents and Grandparents always have a real tree so to put things up in November it would not look good by Christmas Day. But to be honest I have thought about putting up the other decorations!
I think it is because people have had not so good a year and with the news and all the doom and gloom happening in the World people want a lift and they get it when they go out shopping as all the shops are decorated and the Christmas Market in Nottingham has opened.
Chatsworth House has been decorated and open for Christmas since the beginning of November and Youngest & Partner went yesterday to see the House and also their Christmas Market which is on until the end of November.
You all know that I love Christmas and have been playing Christmas music in my car when I have been travelling round since October and no I am not fed up with it! We are intending to decorate for Christmas the weekend of November 30th, December 1st, we will get the tree on the Saturday morning and then go for breakfast at the garden centre and look at all the Christmas decorations there and then start in the afternoon. In the evening we will have dinner for Youngest for his Birthday and then carry on with the decorating on Sunday during the day. In the evening it is the Christmas Light Switch On in the village and DH will be doing the commentary. We will then be ready for Christmas!
During December we have a few dinners planned with friends and seeing family of course, which is always the best bit of Christmas.
So with 40 Days to go until Christmas, I hope your plans are going well.
One of the events which is always very popular is “Christmas at Chatsworth” where the house is dressed for Christmas. It began after the terrible incident of foot & mouth disease we had in the UK from February to September 2001. The late Duke of Devonshire decided to open the House in the run up to Christmas to help out as it had been closed during the above months. DH & I took the Boys and that first year it was very simple with Christmas tress in every room and it was lit my candles.
It was such a hit that they decided to run the event the following year but with a theme and has been happening ever since. The Theme for this year is the book “Henry and the Lion’s Christmas Feast” by Joseph Coelho OBE who is a multi-award winning playwright and Author of over 45 books.
DH and I don’t go every year but have been several times and love it. Unfortunately I cannot go this year but Youngest & Girlfriend are going to go. The House also run, during November, a Christmas Market which is just outside the gates of Chatsworth and when they are booked in to go the market is also on. Both events are very popular and it is best to book as soon as possible. Hopefully they will get some photographs I can show you.
We are very lucky to live in Derbyshire and have Chatsworth on our doorstep to be able to visit during the year. When the Boys were little and had broken up from school for Christmas we used to take them and the dog up to the Grounds on December 23rd for a long walk and we have been there when it was like the picture above with snow and one year it was thick fog. The Boys loved it and it was great to spend a few hours outside in the fresh air before all the festivities.
My Favourite year was 2017 when the theme was based on Charles Dicken’s Books. Here are some galleries of pictures of the tour.
The Entrance to The House
The Hallway
A “Tree” of Books
Closer view
“Windows” showing what is for sale this is fabric!
Cottons & Other Sewing goods
The Christmas Tree in the Private Chapel
The Christmas Tree in the Painted Hall
The Christmas Tree in one of the Bedrooms.
The Library, my favourite room in the whole house.
The Christmas Tree in the Anti-Library
A pocket watch on the tree.
One of the Christmas Trees with Sewing things on it.
The Dining Room was based upon Miss Havisham’s room from “Great Expectations”.
The Final Christmas Tree in The Sculpture Gallery with Scrooge’s reformed words from “A Christmas Carol”
The Saturday we went which was December 9th we had snow in the morning. The above is the view from the car park outside Chatsworth House.
After we left it began to snow again and this was the countryside on our way home.
Our garden when we got home!
I am hoping that DH & I will be able to go next year.
I hope you lovely lot are having a good week and enjoying the last days of October. Halloween tomorrow and then we have Bonfire Night next week, although a lot of the formal events are taking place this weekend. At the moment the weather is due to be cloudy but no rain. Half way through the week!
Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx
Our Wonderful Treacle with her Santa Hat on! Coco is not keen on hats at the moment!
I started writing this post at lunch and it is now 7.30pm!!! I don’t honestly know where the days and weeks are flying to!
I used to start looking and booking things when our Boys went back to School in September but this year all the Christmas activities have been out way before that so I have already booked the visit to see Santa at Christmas with Eldest, Partner & The Children. This was last year above. Can’t wait to go this year and of course we have Little Man as well. I have also booked for Youngest, Partner, DH & I to go back a week later to have dinner on the Steam Train for his Birthday (don’t tell anyone but he is 25 this year!)
Of course that started me looking at the Christmas pictures! I don’t know if I showed these to you last year but our National Newspaper “The Telegraph” had done an article about The Savoy in London decorating for Christmas and asked Readers to send pictures of their decorations. I did and these are the ones who appeared and mine was at the head of the article!
This little Santa Claus was in fact my Mother’s and I think is it made of ceulloid. He is very delicate and I think it is coming up to being 100 years old. I carefully wrap him each year when we take the decorations down in acid free tissue paper and hope he is okay the following year.
The above ornament was made by Eldest when he was at Playschool! He comes out every year although he is losing a bit of his glitter but he is twenty six years old now!
Eldest & Youngest with the same Christmas Jumpers!!!
Little Miss Coco who had had a Haircut in time for Christmas.
I am starting to feel very Christmasy! If this year is anything to go by It is not too early to start spreading some Christmas cheer!!!
Happy Monday you lovely lot and I hope you have a good week.
Well September flew by before I knew it! Being ill for some of it did not help and having Doctors appointments, blood tests and things I am quite glad it has left! Hopefully October is going to be a little kinder, but I am not counting my chickens yet.
For everyone who likes to hide their heads in the sand about Christmas, I hate to tell you this but there are 85 days left before the Big Day! It you like to look at it this way, it is twelve weeks to go, so some would say it is three months yet but as we know the weeks really do fly by so before we know it, Christmas will be here. As you, who follow me regularly, know I love Christmas. Especially the build up to it and I have noticed that my Instagram feed has been getting a lot more Christmas posts. As the last few weeks have been not good I have even, much to the horror of our Boys, started playing Christmas music in my car. Eldest moaned the other day when he had to move my car and it was playing “Merry Christmas Everybody”!!!! 🙂
If you remember last Christmas I ended up with Shingles. I was ill over our summer holiday so I am absolutely determined I am not going to be ill this Christmas. Hence my planning, sorting out and generally getting organised this year so that by the time December arrives, everything is sorted and I can actually sit back, relax and enjoy the holidays and not be ill!!! SO I am probably going to annoy a lot of you now, but I have almost finished my Christmas shopping! I have planned the Christmas baking and am in the process of sorting out our freezers so that I can make things and put them in the freezer ready for December. Obviously we don’t know yet who is going where for Christmas Day but I have two plans incorporating different numbers so I can just pick whichever list I need.
There will be a few Christmas visits seeing family and friends and some other fun things to do which I will hopefully have pictures to show you. It would be lovely if it snowed this year, especially when we don’t have to get about but I am not sure that it will co-operate. It has been heavy rain here for the last two days and we are getting some local flooding again so I suspect this will be it for the rest of the year. Our leaves are coming off the trees quite a bit now but are of course very wet so quite hard to pick up. I am hoping at the weekend, which we have off, we will get a day when it is dry to try and get the leaves up.
October I am planning on getting quite a bit done and also some more de-cluttering and tidying as well as a bit of Autumn cleaning (like Spring Cleaning but not everything!) before we decorate for Halloween, Bonfire Night and then Christmas.
Friday DH and I will be going to Goose Fair, always the start of Autumn events for us and then home jobs over the weekend and at the moment the weather is due to be good so we can get some garden jobs done too and also home jobs.
I hope your September went well and October is going to be kind.
Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx
Coco in snuggle mode on our bed.
Blaze on his platform where he can look out of the window and be nosey!
Only just in my case! This week was supposed to be a catch up week as it was short one and I was going to get lots done, AGAIN! No, trying to get over shingles is not easy! I have done some work but nothing else.
We have also arrived at the worst time of year for me, taking the Christmas decorations down and packing it all away. I hate it! DH is going to help tonight and tomorrow and I will get our home clean and tidy and also catch up on all the washing and ironing which has been breeding in the laundry room!
If you are in the UK you will know and if not may have seen, how much flooding we have here in the East Midlands and other parts of the UK. We have had so much rain and flooding in the latter part of 2023 that the ground is satuarted and so the new rain has nowhere to go. Our garden is always wet in Winter anyway and we do not go on it unless absolutely necessary but of course Coco goes up. Well the mat by the back door, which is grey, is now muddy brown and Coco has to be almost washed every time she comes in.
DH decided that action was needed. When Coco was a puppy we did not want her up in the garden as there were too many places she could hide, so we restricted her to the patio with the pots. Well as she grew older she worked out how to get around them via the garden! So now she is a big, grown up Doggy our bench has had to be used to stop her up the steps and the pots on the wall. So far it is working!!!!!!
Sad news today for all of us who were young in 1975 (I was eleven), David Soul has passed away. Starsky & Hutch was the first TV series, certainly on British TV, which was exciting and different to anything we had and I loved it. I had posters on my wall, although I hate to say it I liked Paul Michael Glaser more (!) and all the other stuff. Funnily enough my Boys like the show too and of course had models of the car!
As well as trying to get a lot done tomorrow, I have an appointment at the Hospital as well! DH is also setting up the sound equipment for Sunday for the Swimming Open. We will be getting there at 6.00am and won’t get back until about 8.00pm, a long day! Hopefully it will not be a sauna this year unlike last, where we could hardly breathe! Next week I will be back to work properly hopefully and the shingles will be firmly in the rear view mirror!
I hope you lovely lot have a wonderful weekend, the first of the New Year, and you get some time to do some reading or anything else you want to do.
Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx
A final few pictures of Christmas before we take it all down until eleven months time! Mind you the way the weeks and months fly by it will soon be here!!!
Yep that is my word for 2024! This started last year by my reading something in the Daily Telegraph about choosing a word to use during the year, rather than lists of Resolutions (!) that people make and then by the end of two weeks and we are all back at work and busy, forget about!
I also started a list of Aims for each year rather then Resolutions because again it does not seem so demanding! They are pretty much the same as last year (!)
Aim 1: Try to read more. Aim 2: Try to do more quilting. Aim 3: Try to be more organised. Aim 4: Try to find more balance between work and home.
I think the biggest one is Aim 4. Trying to find that balance and I am sure those who read my Blog probably feel the same. The balance between work which we need to do and our home life which is the best bit is the hardest thing and the last two years there has been more work than anything else and I hope that this year we can balance that up a little bit! As I say it is an Aim!
Whatever happens during the coming year it will be fun to find out and see how things play out and I am very grateful to have my lovely family and my Blogging Friends & Followers along for this wild ride of life!
You can tell that we are in the New Year! It used to be on TV when we only had three stations (!) that you knew it was New Year because every advert break had some sort of weight loss advert on! I always used to think it was so unfair. Having had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends and yes perhaps eating more that in a normal week but it is Christmas. Then these adverts would start and basically shame you. Its the same at the gyms, which would be practically empty before Christmas but whatever time you go now it is full of people with new work out gear on hogging every machine. It is also the same I have to say here in the UK after Wimbledon. All of us who played tennis all year did not go to the courts for two weeks after Wimbledon. It only ever lasted two weeks and the same with the gyms and the diets, people would stop after those two weeks!
Now I have noticed another way for people to beat themselves up after Christmas; the Instagram Influencer declaring that January is the pefect time to declutter your home, car, husband, children, LIFE! I am not joking! If not one but at least twenty have popped up onto my feed this week all advocating a different way to throw everything out!
These Instagram Influencers two weeks before were all around showing you their carefully curated Christmas decorations without a pine needle out of place (not that they have real trees as that is too much hard work!) and showing you pictures from every angle but come one minute past Midnight on December 26th and they are there with their Dyson stick vacuums, having packed all their decorations away, cleaning for all they are worth. Then out come the boxes lablled “Keep”, “Donate”, “Sell”! Why they think anyone else will want their stuff who knows!
Don’t get me wrong I am all for decluttering. Goodness knows I fully realised that having the bear minimum was a good thing, after having had to clear out my Mother and then my Grandmother’s homes after they passed. Particularly my Grandmother’s home as she had had her mother living with her for a few years so that was like two homes in one! My relatives were of the era where you had two sets of china; the good set for high days and holidays and the every day set! I was determined to only have one set of china (well pottery actually) and it gets used every day and holidays!
They both had cabinets full of things which they had been bought or collected which were just sitting in a cupboard. The best piece of advice we had was from the lady who came from the Auctioneers to value my Grandmother’s things. She said keep what you love and let the rest go, otherwise our home would be filled to the brim with stuff and we would not be able to move. That is what we did. It was a shame as my Grandmother had some wonderful pieces of furniture but they fitted into her old Victorian home and definitely would not have fitted in our little modern one bedroom house!
I, of course, was going to do miracles between Christmas & New Year and gets lots of jobs done, but this bout of shingles put paid to that! I have just finished the antibiotics and just have another day’s worth of antivirals to go. It is feeling a lot better than it did a week ago although I still have the rash on my face (!). I am hoping that I will not have to have another set of tablets, we shall see how it goes.
I am a tidy person at home and do not like it when things get in a mess so that helps (if I am honest I am a little OCD about it!) and I do have a sort out, as we always called it, every so often to get rid of things that have sat in drawers for ages and not been needed or used so I get rid of them in some way.
So over the next few weeks I will be doing a bit of decluttering but don’t let these Instagram people shame you in any way! I love the Christmas decorations up and only take them down on January 6th when I absolutely have to! I dust them all and put them back in their boxes for December 1st this year when they can come out again. Don’t let the fitness Influencers shame you into drastic diets either! As a PT guy said the other day slow and steady wins the race and I firmly believe that!
I hope your first week of January is going well, you lovely lot.
As with most things these days, the time between Christmas and New Year is being over analysed in our papers and social media. It also seems to have been named “twixmas” as in between Christmas and New Year! Why does everything have to have a dreadful name?
When I was little my Parents and Grandparents used to spend these days together, the men walking the dogs and doing some work in the gardens if the weather was kind and my Mom and Grandma baking, cooking or doing some home jobs. We are much the same. DH and Eldest working at the garage doing odd jobs, Youngest is busy fitting Christmas presents to his truck and Land Rover and well I am not doing a lot, see further down!!!!!
We had a wonderful few days. The above pictures are Christmas Eve. Eldest and Girlfriend came for the day on Christmas Day with Youngest, DH & I. The weather was horribly grey and raining so I decided not to open the curtains all day!!!
Our Dining Room ready for Christmas Dinner.
We ate at 2.00pm as Eldest was back on the run at the Fire Station in the evening, although they did not get called out at all. We watched the new Mission Impossible film in the evening which was great.
The rest of the decorations in our dining room.
We got to do it all again on Boxing Day which is always more relaxed. I always do a buffet and everyone eats when they want. We then played Monopoly in the evening and DH, Girlfriend and I were out after a while and it was between the two Boys and Eldest won in the end with Youngest not too far behind!
Eldest and the red shoes are Girlfriend under one of my Christmas presents! She is getting very tired now at twenty eight weeks pregnant!!!
Eldest and Girlfriend brought Honey with them of course both days and she and Coco spent the days playing and racing around. Both of them were so tired at the end of the two days.
The Christmas Cake and Chocolate Log done and ready for Christmas Day!
DH and Eldest building Lego!!!!!!
On Saturday I thought I had a spot on my left ear but over the course of Christmas Eve, Day and Boxing Day it swelled and then the left side of my face swelled and I had three patches on my face which stopped in the middle of my chin. It was quite painful too. Anyway a trip to the Doctors yesterday for him to tell me I have shingles! I now have a weeks course of antivirals and antibiotics to hopefully get rid of it and if not, a return appointment for a weeks time! Only me!
Coco also had a visit to the vets on the Saturday before Christmas as she had managed to get cystitus! She is also on tablets but is a lot better. She has a follow up appointment this Saturday!
DH has been at Eldest’s garage yesterday and today helping with some jobs whilst he is closed. Hopefully tomorrow the weather is going to be a bit better and we can get some jobs done at home too! We have had a lot of rain over the holidays and there is some flooding again.
I hope you lovely lot have had a wonderful Christmas.
Hugs & Love, Susie xx
Coco in her basket by my desk as I write this!!! Still recovering from her busy Christmas.
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