General Chat

My oh is like that AnnG when he explains things to me during a tv program so you miss what they are saying on the thing your watching. Thats why I watch the things I want to see when he has gone to bed.

Ann you did'nt send us a pic of the tree you made for Sandra!!!!!! I would have liked to have seen that. Hows the pom poms going?

All set up in the church now ready for tomorrow. When I went down with the ring this morning there were loads of cars at the big house and when I went in the church there were wedding flowers everywhere so I put the ring in the bell tower without its candles on. I asked Jane (church warden) when the service for the wedding was so I could go after it and set it up. When I put the candles in one of the holders came loose and more or less fell out. I had to take it right out and rewire it back in. I shall have to give it a good make over for next year as I think the wires are all rusting. Maybe time to start from scratch again but it saves time if I use the same one each year. Anyway its all done now for another year. They had taken ALL the flowers out of the church. Anything on the altar in the sanctury should be left there once placed in there but they had put a huge one right on the altar and that was gone too. There was one flower left on the floor and I was going to pick it up and bring it home but I forgot all about it.

Must try and finish my last bobble hat.

Oh yes AnnG! We were saying the same at the craft group on Wednesday. We ladies get on with all sorts of jobs, sometimes 2 at a time but don't say anything most of the time. OHs on the other hand do just as you say and have to announce what they have done. Even worse, I get home sometimes and I've hardly got my coat off before I get 'I've done blah blah......and then the words I dread when I get home tired and ready to sit down with a COT.......'COME AND HAVE A LOOK!' It's as if they need instant praise every time they do something. They don't even notice all the routine tasks we do each day to keep a home as nice as we do. Your little cottages will look very pretty when you set them up and I look forward to seeing a pic.

I haven't started any more pompoms yet, but I did hoover most of the bungalow, go through the freezer stuff and chuck a few things out and found some salmon in a dill sauce we can have for lunch tomorrow. I also put my tablets in the dispenser boxes. I still feel very tired, but the cough is still not quite gone so that may be why. I got my second Christmas card today.......a pretty one from Australia.

Oh I forgot to send a pic Mel, but it was the same as the green one I made only with white pearls with pink baubles on it.

Morning all on the 1st of December and just over three weeks to go to the big day.

Suns shining here, what a change it makes I may actually get some varnishing done today as its dryer.

How did you all sleep last night?

Well the sun may be out but the winds bitter and cuts through you like a knife.

Morning All

Dry here and sunny too. I had a bad night......the last time I looked at the clock was 4am. I was so tired yesterday afternoon too.

Better get the veg ready now and see if OH wants to go anywhere after lunch.

Good morning all (just), busy busy today putting the cottages up, Actually got them in position and the lights all working. (OH is outside putting the Christmas lights on the front of the house to be switched on later in the week I think, a bit early yet but at least he will have got them done in the dry, even if it is very cold. The sun is shining though so it is all bright.

Off now to put all the figures in place. that will take me a while. And then will have to prep the meal for this evening.

Afternoon all

It's frost here but thankfully no wind so not as cold as it would of been had we had the wind Mel's got. Hope the wind dies down soon for you Mel and you manage to do your varnishing.

Sorry to hear you haven't had a good nights sleep Ann, I hope you have a better one tonight. Thanks for letting me know about Sandra's beaded Christmas Tree, it looks lovely under her pink tree with the lights shining on it.

You've been busy AnnG. I have a light up village I made a few years ago but have decided not to put it up this year as it takes forever to do, so we've got a light up shop bought one this year with a garland around it, I popped some cones and red and gold ribbon bows I've made around it to. It looks very Christmasy. I may add a few fairy lights, just to give it a little lift.

Sandra is watching "Deck the Halls" again, it's her favourite film, this will be the second time she's watched it in a week. I have decided to make a big Christmas cracker and put the DVD we bought her of the film inside it for Christmas Day so she won't guess what it is before she opens it. I really can't wait to see her face as she mentioned this morning that she wanted to buy it for herself after Christmas, it'll be a lovely surprise when she pulls the cracker.

I just need to find out how to make a big cracker now lol ;-) ;-)

She's doing the countdown to Christmas and has already had her first sweet out of her Advent Calendar.

Going to check on lunch now. Be back later.

Good afternoon all,

I thought I had better show early as after I have been out to lunch and had a couple of beers I will be in my armchair, and might not get on here. lol lol

When we first moved to the Post Office in Blisworth over 40 years ago, we were the first to decorate the shop and flat windows. Others followed and now there are lots of houses decorated. It looks so nice. We continued to do this at Gayton. and when we first moved back to the bungalow. but now we feel we are too old to climb steps, to put the lights round the outside. But we do enjoy looking around the village for those who do.

Dry and cold here also. Ros is outside with the leaf VAC, picking up all the leaves off the Wisteria. It's lovely in bloom, but a pain this time of year. !!!

I am up to my usual tricks. I tripped and fell in the bathroom this morning. Fortunately I had showered and shaved, so managed to get to the bedroom and lie on the bed for a while. NO DAMAGED DONE. ;-) ;-) ;-)

Yes not long now before FATHER CHRISTMAS COMES. I hope you are all being good girls, or you won't get presents. !!!

This year, I will be sending cards through the Web I will donate what I would pay in cards and postage to the HORSE TRUST that I support. A few bales of hay will help with their keep. I know you will all understand, that I won't forget you. xxxx

Is it tomorrow when Jane starts her treatment. ?? I do hope and pray that it all goes well for her. Bless you Jane, if you are looking.

Three weeks tomorrow we will be driving down to Devon. I have promised myself, that I will walk along the sea front, provided it's not raining.

I expect you are all preparing your lunch, our table is booked for 3.00 pm so will leave here about 3.45 pm.

I hope you all enjoy the rest of the day. xxx See you soon.

photos of my Christmas cottages are on the photo blog. PM if you have lost the address :-D :-D

I think Frank meant he would be leaving at 2.45pm otherwise he will be three quarters on an hour out and should have eaten by then.

Thanks AnnG I shall go and have a look on your blog.

We've had our big breakfast and I have got another coat of varnish on my two other large dragon eggs.

O it looks lovely AnnG. What a lot of work you have to do to put it all together.

Afternoon all,

Beautiful day today but a bit chilly it's so nice to see the sun and blue sky for a change .
Ann i love Mr and Mrs Owl they look good together :-D
Nice autumn photo's too ,i like the one of the Tree of Heaven such beautiful colours in that one.

If your weather is like ours Mel it would be an ideal day for getting your varnishing done ,not long to go now before you can set up your stall.

Oh no Frank not another fall thank goodness you didn't hurt yourself this time,you'll be glad i expect when you can get your eye sorted so you can see where your walking .
I was going to ask if Ros was driving down to Devon this year as it's quite a drive for her to do .
It's Tuesday and Wednesday when Jane starts her treatment

Ann what a lovely lovely display of all your little Christmas cottages it looks so pretty all lit up and must look even better in the evening when it's dark , i love the little bicycles going through the snow .
Are they all what you have collected over the years ?

I noticed the Deck the Halls film was on again today Gill i thought of Sandra when i saw it :-D
So Sandra has started her advent calendar ,i forgot to ask the little ones if the had started theirs when they came this morning
They did tell me the Naughty Elf was back :-D they said he was on the christmas tree when the came down stairs this morning .

Thinking of Jane and hoping the first lot of treatment goes well on Tuesday <3

It mainly takes patience Mel as the 'snow' is not always conducive to getting figures to stay upright. That is why I didn't do it before we had the little ones here. glad you like it.

AnnG i can see why you didn't put the cottages up while the children were there ,it would have been so tempting for them to touch them and rearrange the display
for you :-D

Mandy glad you like the display, yes the figures have been collected over about 20 years, the cottages as well. I am not sure I could afford the cottages now they have really gone up in price. The figues are expensive as well, I usually buy a couple when the sales are on after Christmas. I love 'playing' with them, putting them onto place, brings out the child in me. when Luke was three and Adam just crawling they did come for the weekend and Luke didn't touch anything just looked. Adam was not standing so didn't get near them. Adam would have been in amongst them this year if they had been up. He doesn't recognise the word 'no' unfortunately.

Naughty elf visited Inara last night too and this morning he had thrown toilet roll everywhere. But he left her a lovely letter saying she had been good and he had passed the message on to Santa who was at that moment sorting out some presents for her. (talk about winding the kids up four weeks before!).

Frank thank goodness no damage done this morning. do you lose your balance because you get dizzy or do you trip because you can't see properly?

Love the pics on your blog AnnG, that must of taken you ages to do. I bet it looks lovely at night when it's all lit up. Mine is no where near as big and my houses, church and people are a lot smaller. OH said it looks like the one in our Garden Centre, the one Sandra loves to go and see every year. You've done a great job. It looks like the Naughty Elf has been really naughty at Inara's house, nice to leave the letter though.

I see the Naughty Elf is back again to Mandy? The children will love that. I wonder what he'll be up to this year.

Have you finished the varnishing on your dragon eggs now Mel? Only a few days to go to the Craft Fair, I hope you finish everything on time and have a good day selling everything.

Sorry to hear you've had another fall Frank, but pleased to hear you're okay and no damage done. So Ros is busy outside again, we've just had to move one of our 12 foot tall Red Robin's, we think a cat has been trying to scale the screening and it got broke at the top. I don't have anymore of it and won't be able to buy any until next spring so we moved the plant in front of it before it got broken altogether. It wasn't easy with it being so big and heavy but it's done now and actually makes that area look a bit bigger now the two plants aren't so close to each other anymore.

Going to watch a Christmas film I've recorded with Sandra and OH now before the F1 starts.

Your cottages make a fabulous display AnnG.....I love it and so must your visitors! You seem to have thought of everything and there is so much to look at! I love the 'Kittens Free To Good Home' sign.

Good idea to disguise the CD in a big Cracker Gill so she won't know what it is! ;-) I bet she's loving all the Christmas films that are on bless her. At least these days you can record them all. It seems strange now to think we had to watch things when they were aired or you missed them.

I've finished the pompom wreath and sent a pic. The colour is brighter than the pic shows as it was dull when I took the photo, but it has cheered the hallway up!

I hope you enjoy your meal Frank and am sorry you had another fall........it must be even more difficult with not being able to see properly. OH has just managed to wrench his back! He was in his stockinged feet on the slippy lounge floor and unsurprisingly slipped! I am very happy you are donating to a horse charity instead of sending cards. They are very close to my heart as they helped me through some tough times at home as a teenager.

It's wise not to try climbing steps to put lights up outside Frank. We have never done it here yet. I watched someone putting them up on a house near here yesterday and it looked positively dangerous the way the ladder was leaning.Our 2 neighbours opposite have put them up the last few years, but our neighbour next door complained and he changed them for some softer ones. We were relieved as it is dark with no street lights outside us and the previous ones were multi function and were playing patterns on our bedroom wall when we went to bed and they stayed on till after midnight. I do ride round areas where they have them though as some are very pretty and tasteful, especially the trees and shrubs that are lit up.

Glad you all like the pics.. yes the kittens free sign is fun Ann I also like the photographer with the sign saying photos with Santa, that is a recent buy. It is fun putting the figures out, sometimes I change them during the Christmas weeks.
Thoughtless to have bright lights that have sequence flashing. They could have put them on constant. We have ours going off at 10pm.

Gosh, AnninG, I didn't realise you had put together a complete village. I thought it would just be two or three little buildings. You have made a super display - I reckon you could charge people to come and see it :-D It's very impressive, I particularly like the little bikes. We don't do much in the way of decorations these days but we always hang the cards and always have a decent sized real tree. I would like a wreath for the front but our front door isn't really suitable so I have a long garland that hangs down one side of the door.

Ann, I love Mrs Owl with her slanted eyes and your pom pom wreath looks great. I also love the autumn colours in the photos. Your poor OH straining his back – you’ll have to buy him snow chains for his feet, then he won’t go slipping about so much. I hope it feels better quickly.

Mel, I bet the church is pleased they have people like you to sort flowers and make the advent ring for them. Now that’s done you will be able to concentrate on your craft stall. I’m sure you are going to do really well with sales; everything looks so good.

I bet Sandra is getting really excited now she has started on her advent calendar and she can see how close we are getting to Christmas day. When my first grandchild was 17 or 18 months OH made a board with 24 hooks in it and I acquired 24 cotton drawstring bags to hang on the hooks. I filled each one with a little gift- a couple of crayons, a hair slide, a little chocolate bar etc. It seemed a good idea at the time but I certainly made a rod for my own back. Five grandchildren later I found I was having to make or buy things for 120 little bags! They all had them for 10 years till they started at secondary school and they loved opening a little bag each day.

Sorry to hear you have had another fall Frank but I am glad there was no real damage done. Going down with a bump would shake anyone up a bit but hopefully you enjoyed your lunch at the carvery. Of course we understand about making a donation instead of sending cards. Several of my friends do that and it’s good that the charities get some benefit. I am a half and half person. I send cards to friends and relatives that I don’t see much and I always buy those cards from the Cards for Good Causes pop up shop as virtually all the proceeds go to the charities. We also belong to various clubs and everyone there exchanges cards but they all know that we make a donation instead of giving them all cards. I can wish them a very happy Christmas face to face.

Yesterday and today have been sunshine and showers and very cold. I got the roast in the oven late morning so we could eat about 2 pm, saw it was dryish so dashed out to do a bit more in the garden completely forgetting that I had put some apples and plums on to stew. Came in 45 mins later to find a splodge of caramelized fruit and a very burnt saucepan so I wasn’t a happy bunny.

I laughed at you saying that your OHs feel they have to tell you in detail what they have been doing in the house or garden. My little treasure insists on telling me the ins and outs of everything he has been reading. As most of the books he has read lately are mine I really don’t need chapter and verse. The worst is when he insists on giving me all the technical details of what he has been doing on the computer. It’s like conversing in another language.

I am currently training him in bathroom cleaning. A few weeks ago I was in a grumpy mood and had a moan about him not doing his share of housework so he decided that, as a start, once a week he would clean all the bathrooms (main bathroom, 2 en-suites and a downstairs cloakroom). To give him his due he has been sticking to his promise so the first week I just said Thank You when he had finished though to my mind they were only half done. He had cleaned the toilets and basins. Today when he was getting disinfectant etc. out I just mentioned that cleaning the bathroom also involved emptying the little waste bins and cleaning the mirrors. They got done so next week I shall mention cleaning the floors. Then I think I will just have to train him to check that there are spare loo rolls available and see if the air freshener needs replacing and to dust the frog ornaments that I have in the main bathroom. I’ll make a cleaner out of him yet.

Tomorrow is our son’s birthday. He’ll be 53. How can my baby possibly be so old when I still feel about 35? With that thought, this poor old lady will drag her weary bones down to the kitchen and make a cup of tea.

Sleep well tonight everyone.

You don't seem old enough to have a 53 year old Vera! Mine does that if he starts reading my newspaper if we are meeting somewhere and I an late arriving. Then when I start reading it myself he starts to tell me about what he's already read in it himself......so annoying. Doing half a job seems to be a 'man' thing so good luck with the training! I tried not complaining straightaway, but when I said he hadn't done something the next time his retort was that it had been 'alright the last time and he'd done it just the same'. Sometimes you can't win! I like the idea of little bags for an advent calendar with tiny gifts in them. I know Mandy was going to do something with little buckets.........I wonder if she did? What a shame you caramelised your apples and plums. :-0 Time passes so quickly when you start another job though and now you have no stewed fruit and a pan to clean. :-S

I am being summoned to watch David Attenborough so will sign off now. Sleep well everyone x