Happy Christmas dear readers



Hope you're all having a lovely time. As you can see, Dot overdid it a bit on the Christmas dinner, but after 30-something years I'm still making that mistake so who can blame her.

We've had a lovely English country Christmas - lots of walks in the drizzle and pints at the pub - and tried to keep it as green as possible. For example, we wrapped all our pressies in recycled paper from our stash at home. But don't think this meant they looked crap; wrapping pressies is one of my all time favourite things and I take great pride in it, so recycled or not our pressies looked as chic as ever; see exhibit a for proof.



I also insisted on keeping all the paper which came off everyone's pressies. They looked at me like I was weird, apart from the mother in law who kindly amassed a stash of wrapping for me. When I said that all that paper and ribbon was so exciting it almost felt like an extra pressie, even she gave me a funny look and the hubby said "That's what I meant the other day when I said you have a really geeky side".

Anyway, we're off to my parents tomorrow so undeterred I've now wrapped the next batch of pressies in cast-offs from today. Two Xmasses for the price of one - a bit of a change from the innocent days I remember from childhood when we used to fill a black bin liner with discarded Christmas wrapping (no wonder the media are full of how many extra tons go into landfill around Xmas), and the pressies look just as good.