Day 619

Day 619...

Well it is rather late in the day and I've still got stuff to do so this may be a quick post.

The morning started with breakfast and snow...yes we had snow this morning and for a while it came down quite heavy leaving everywhere looking very festive. 

As Molly and Dan had arrived home yesterday Simon had decided to cook up a treat and he'd made a batch of waffle mix so that this morning we could have Mickey waffles for breakfast.

Mickey waffle maker

Mickey waffles!!!

The first job of the day was to help Molly and Dan load up Dan's car with some of Molly's stuff that we hadn't been able to take with us when she moved out a few weeks ago. Thankfully the snow had stopped but everywhere was very slushy and very cold.

We then decided to carry on working outside as we were already cold and put up our Christmas lights. I have had to come up with a slightly different way of doing things this year as our new windows will not let me feed cables through as I've done before so I am having to use just the two outdoor sockets that we have. But I've been able to get the majority of lights plugged in and so my back garden is looking pretty festive.

Although I did have a slight mishap when I accidentally cut through a cable (thankfully not plugged in)...oops! This meant I was one set of lights short so I then had the brainwave to re-purpose the lights that are normally hung along the front of the house. I'm not able to put any along the front of the house this year as we don't have any outdoor sockets that side of the house.

The finished results;

Then this afternoon we dropped Molly off at her old kickboxing academy as she was helping out with their black belt grading as we then collected our grocery shopping before heading home to carry on with more Christmas decorating.

Back home and we had a few bits to finish off outside before me and Dan spent a couple of hours assembling my three trees; one in the dining area, one in the hall and my main one in the living room. We have all the decorations out and now have the task of deciding where they should go and decorating the trees...think this maybe a job for tomorrow!

And with a much deserved Indian take-away that was our Saturday.

See you tomorrow.
xx

Mid-week Muddle

Day 259...

Well today has been another very busy work day. There is lots to plan for at the moment at work as we have the last few weeks of term to see out and then start planning for the new term in January.

We have invoices to calculate, registers to organise, fees to chase, Santa letters to print and post, a Christmas raffle to manage, the usual banking and lots more.

My team have been working very hard to take part in a community event where schools have been asked to display artwork in their windows or, in our case, on our gate as part of a Christmas Light Trail through the village over the course of the next couple of weeks. They have got the artwork almost sorted and tomorrow I am off in search of some battery operated lights so that we can make it look all pretty and festive but much more importantly visible at night!

After a busy morning I dashed home to quickly get set-up to jump online for a safeguarding course via Microsoft Teams. I switched my laptop on, got my headphones sorted, paper and pen ready to go and followed the link I'd been sent. It was only after I'd done all that that I happened to notice the date of the course in the email confirmation...3rd December...oh dear! That's tomorrow - oops! In my defence when I'd booked the course I'd had to pick two dates in case the first date I chose was fully booked and the other date I had picked was today...but still not really an excuse for mis-reading the email with the course link in it.  Oh well, that just means that on my day off from work tomorrow I will have a course to attend! I suppose it was a good job it was a virtual course rather than me having driven to a location to then discover I'd got it wrong.

But that did mean I could get on with some of the other jobs that needed completing for pre-school, which probably meant I got more work done today than I would have done otherwise. As I said there is lots happening at the moment and I want to be able to get as much done as quickly as possible so that when we break for Christmas I don't have anything outstanding.

Molly was back at her karate lesson tonight, although rather than attending a 'class' she was simply able to make use of the resources there to do her own training. This means she can actually have a workout and practice on kickboxing dummies rather than just thin air as it has been via Zoom.

So as we are now in 'Tier 3'; we are able to go shopping, get our hair and nails done, go to a gym but we can't go to a pub or a restaurant. Our local pub has today said that it will not be opening over Christmas at all. The next review of the 'Tiers' will not happen for a couple of weeks and if we do move down a tier it will not give the pub enough notice to re-open for Christmas. I received a very heartfelt email from the owner of this small chain of pubs expressing what a hard decision it has been and how awful it has been having to contact thousands of people to cancel already booked tables, but thanking everyone for being so understanding. This has been devastating for the hospitality and entertainment sector and it is heartbreaking for all those involved.

Let's finish today's post with a little more Christmas vibe...here are some of my other Christmas trees...

A Mickey tree of course, just a small desktop one.

Another small desktop tree, this time a rainbow of colours for Ethan's room

Gorgeous white with purple decorations, this is Molly's.

This small classic tree sits on the hearth and must be at least 25 years old!
Not looking bad!!

After I'd took these photos I then realised that I have still more trees to share in the form of ornaments...but I'll save those for another day.

Take care out there.

xx

Treerific Tuesday!

Day 258...

Back in work today and another busy day...although the morning was hampered by my laptop deciding to work at the slowest speed possible. It would appear it does not like having a big update and wants to rebel when I need to use it!

But over the course of the day I did manage to get caught up on all the banking, dealt with a few emails that needed responding to, arranged a delivery date for our storage containers, chased parents for responses to various emails and made a start on our Christmas fundraising.

As we cannot host our usual Christmas Fair we are having to do things a little differently this year. We will be having a stall set-up next week selling reindeer food, Santa keys, reindeer bells, jelly lollies and special festive treat cups. But we are also having a raffle which will be managed remotely. All the staff have contributed towards a Christmas hamper which looks amazing, we have a couple of local businesses donating prizes and our local Asda store has donated a trolley full of goodies. Jon, our contact at Asda, is amazing and always looks after us so well, this time we have a large Simba soft toy and a mountain of chocolate and biscuits to raffle.

I will admit that due to the slowness of my laptop this morning my work carried on at home. I really wanted to get on top of things as I have an online course to attend tomorrow afternoon so I will lose a few hours of my day to that.

Simon and Molly headed down the 'gym' this evening but as I was still typing things up I decided not to bother. Although I really need to find the motivation to get back into doing some sort of gym workout. Thankfully we are getting out for our walks as often as we can so at least I am doing something, but it would be good to get back to lifting a few weights again.

Thought I would take this first day of Advent to share some of my Christmas decorations, specifically some of our trees;

This is our main tree, and ALL the decorations are Disney themed.

Our black & silver tree, welcomes you into the house

And a slimmer tree for the dining room with quirky Santa & Snowmen decorations

And we do have a further four much smaller trees throughout the house as well as these two outside...

...suffice to say when we do Christmas, we really do Christmas! I'll share some more photos in another post.

This is our last day in our national lockdown number two and from one minute past midnight we revert back to the tier system with where we live being in the highest tier possible. So shops can re-open along with hairdressers and other personal care but the pubs, cafes and restaurants have to remain closed unless they can offer a take-away service. I still struggle with the logic behind these tiers...never mind not being convinced it's what we should, or need, to be doing. But there is nothing I can do about it all except just carry on as best I can.

Take care
xx