Home Sweet Home

Arrived back home in England yesterday after an awful journey through torrential rain / flooding / tree debris in Wales. A quick shopping expedition to stock up the fridge and freezer and I do not want to go anywhere for a few days. I have a date with my crochet and sewing!

As I could not transfer photos from my camera to my iPad on holiday here are  a load of catch up photos.
23rd December arrival at Dihewyd mid-Wales

Welcome basket from Wynne and Alan the cottage owners

Our ground floor bedroom

Our bathroom, big enough to hold a party in!

The cosy lounge with log burning stove and underfloor heating

Abigail and Eleanor discover the tree and decoration around the house.

24th December

Our Welsh longhouse with bunting made by me [ at the door] and the girls

Richard and Jacq arrive in time for supper

25th Christmas Day

Father and son in Christmas mood

Handing out the gifts

Abigail finds time for a little crochet

Jacq can't face more food!

Playing with our gifts, plus I'm colouring in the roof of Eleanor's dolls house gift.

Abigail's gone crackers!

Christmas dinner

Eleanor puts together her card dolls house, we all enjoyed colouring it in, especially me!

28th December [ no idea what happened to the 26 and 27th!]

Sun rise from the cottage

A visit to Aberaeron

The houses around the harbour are all painted different colours, a beautiful sight.

Two Cormorants sitting on the harbour wall

Time to let someone else do the cooking and we visit the Celtic Restaurant famous for its fish and chips

I ordered plaice [ my favourite fish ] it was huge but delicious

30th Our final day

As we finally leave the cottage at 8am Abigail plaits Eleanor's hair.

What a great week spent with the family, we even talked about doing it again next year.

Third attempt

Happy Christmas from Dihewyd, mid Wales.

I'm not having much luck attempting to post on my blog over Christmas, mostly because I forgot to bring the gadget that transfers photos from my camera to my blog! So here goes with a third attempt!

We are spending Christmas week with the family in a rented Welsh Long barn. The house is excellent for the six of us, with a bedroom on the ground floor and two upstairs. There have been endless games of UNO, dice games, Yahtzee and Santa story games. All great fun with loads of presents.

Here are a few photos taken with my iPad, not my favourite way of taking photos but the best I can do.

 

 

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Another finish

I started making a Persian Tile crochet blanket by Janie Crow in June and then changed my mine and after completing one square changed to making the ATB CAL [ around the bases crochet along] .
Having finished the crochet sometime ago I finally sewed the ends in last night and now it just needs blocking but that will have to wait until the nicer weather. I like to block on foam mats and lay it in the sun to dry, so mid winter is not the time to do that!

Stylecraft Special DK wool with hook size 4.
ATB a free 16 week CAL on keitopalette.wordpress.com

Machine Embroidery

It's raining Gingerbread men around here... I have made a load to give as little gifts.
The larger ones hold your knife fork and spoon.

Yesterday I attended a meeting at BSK Bedford and made a small flock of sheep, if you can call four sheep a flock?  They are so cute with the fleece fabric. Hope to make more in the New Year.

 Having seen this idea at a recent buffet table I decided to have a trial run making some Santa hats to serve at Christmas. My friend Judith and I are both on diets so we tried them this afternoon and think they are a hit.

Santa hats for dieters: a grape, slice of banana, strawberry and tiny marshmallow on a cocktail stick... yummy

Happy Christmas

Just like to wish everyone a very Happy and Peaceful Christmas.

Love this knitted and crocheted Christmas tree in Alpujarras, Grenada Spain.

After all the lovely time spent on two Turkey and Tinsel breaks it has been a busy time getting everything ready for our next trip away. Yes we are off again, this time to Wales with the family for Christmas.

Lazy New Years Eve

Yes it's New Year's Eve AGAIN! After a quick trip to see if Lidl had any bargains we decided to have a lazy day. Sitting in the quiet room Chris is reading and I continue my Sophies Universe crochet.

While sitting here another guest in the hotel told me about a great cat crochet pattern that she had made, so a quick check and as its free on Ravelry I have put it in my 'to do' box. I need to live to be 120 plus to complete my 'to do' box!

I think it's time to go and find a hot drink.

 

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Haynes Motor Museum

Officially it is Boxing Day at the Turkey and tinsel hotel visit.

After another cooked breakfast (weight watchers will have a fit!) we set off for Yeovil to visit the Haynes Motor Museum. What an impressive building, everything looks very new.

One room was full of red cars of every description, my idea of paradise! I'll have the nice red Mustang please Santa!

Where are the reindeer?

Wow so many red cars

Chris in his ideal workshop.

 

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Christmas in Weymouth

Here we are at the Russell Hotel owned by the Daish group. It is not as grand as the hotel we stayed in next door, but we have a nice big room and comfy beds, always a plus as far as I am concerned.

As it's a turkey and tinsel break, we started off with Christmas Eve meal, then yesterday was Christmas Day. A lot of the guests and all the staff were in Christmassy outfits, hats etc.. All very festive.

We decided in the afternoon to go and see Tom Hanks in Bridge of Spies at the cinema, what a great film, I loved it.

 

Back at the hotel it was time for Christmas dinner including a visit from Santa, who gave us all a gift, Daish luggage and key tags, very nice. We are seated with two other self drive couples and there is lots of laughter at the table, they are nice company.

 

Wearing my machine embroidered top.

 

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Time for another Ho Ho Week

There are lots of great offers around for Turkey and Tinsel breaks, so we thought "why not" and booked another week in Weymouth at a different Hotel. Five days for the two of us complete with all meals and entertainment for £135.

Hope Santa will find us again.

BANG in the Happy Room

While sitting in the dining room reading my bible this morning suddenly there was the most enormous bang from my Happy Room. I thought something had happened to the Velux window in the ceiling and it had smashed, so crept into the room carefully putting the light on. Luckily it was not the window but for some reason a large box containing boxes of beads all neatly sorted into their size and colour, had jumped off the shelf and gone everywhere. I really mean EVERYWHERE !
I have wooden floors in my happy room and the beads just bounced from one end to the other and all over my desk, files, basket of wool etc etc...  What a mess.
Having managed to clear up as many as I could in the short time I had before going to church, I have a feeling I am going to be finding beads for a long time.

The floor is covered in beads

They say a picture is as good as a thousand words!

I cannot believe how far they have travelled!

IAM Christmas Party

Started in the year 2000 our little group of eight plus one [ she can only come when someone is missing as I only comfortably have room for eight!] celebrated our Christmas meeting with a party.

The day started with an Angel making workshop, and ribbon, glitter and sewing equipment soon covering the tables. Penny and I supplied the kits. Much laughter ensued, when ribbon was sewn on the wrong sides and one angel was pirouetting as wings did not meet body in the right place!

Eyes down to make angels and cover the house in glitter!
Yes there was even glitter found its way to the loo!

What a great display of angels

We all supplied our own lunch but Dorn supplied the dessert, which was wonderful.
This was followed by "show and tell".

Santa has been busy

Jenny's wonderful Christmas Tree

Penny's Debbie Mumm blocks and machine embroidered block for a lucky Linus child.

Shirley's crocheted shrug should keep her nice and warm this winter

If the shrug is not enough the hot water bottle cover will help!

Each of us having purchased eight £2 gifts, a FQ and a £5 gift plus writing eight cards the fun started.

Much laughter opening our £2 gifts

Opening eight little parcels, which amazingly were all different, and I don't think we have had a repeat in the 15 years we have been doing this! was great fun.

Love all the different wrapping

Next we played the  Right/ Left game with FQ's. I read the story as quickly as I could to add to the mayhem.

I found a new version of the dice swap game, which we played with the £5 gifts we had all supplied. First you needed to throw a six to take a gift, when everyone had a gift they were opened and then 6 rounds of throwing the dice meant every time you threw a six you had to exchange your gift with someone else. It is always funny how there is something everyone wants!

What a brilliant fun way to start the Christmas festivities with all my crafting friends.