Are you feeling Christmassy yet??

 

Personally, I find I'm feeling less and less "Christmassy" every year.  Perhaps it's because the kids are grown up ~ hard to believe that the gruesome-twosome will be 30 at the end of January!  For the last couple of years the "adults" in the family have pared back on Christmas gift-giving.  It gets harder and harder to think of things to buy for each other, although it does seem easier to find birthday gifts for some reason ~ mind you, my sister and I have even stopped sending each other birthday gifts too.

So my Christmas gift shopping is considerably pared back, with only having to seek out things for the kids, my parents and our two nieces.  The latter will be getting John Lewis vouchers (their preference ~ I asked my sister-in-law!) which isn't very original, I know, but they are both grown up and would I'm sure much prefer to choose something for themselves.  I've ordered hampers of Orkney goodies for Sam and my parents from Jollys of Orkney which will be sent to them direct from Jollys later this month, which makes life so much easier!  I've also ordered Adrian's birthday and Christmas gifts ~ always easy to know what to get for him as he has a list 😄

We are having our Christmas dinner on his birthday this year (18th December) as Beverly is working Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, so she won't be here on Christmas Day as there is, of course, no public transport.  It will be the first Christmas in the 39 years we have been together that it will be just the two of us!  Still, let's face it, Christmas isn't going to be "normal" for most folk this year.   

Sam has also had a delivery of Orkney beer from The Orkney Brewery to help lubricate December a little 😉  He would normally spend Christmas Day with my parents and my sister but has decided to stay home this year in view of my Mum's various health conditions.  I don't think he will be too bothered, to be honest, as he does tend to find Christmas a tad annoying 😄 

Beverly, on the other hand, may be almost 30 years old but she is showing no sign yet of being too grown-up for Christmas-every-day!  The bags in the photo above contain the 24 little gifts I gathered together this year, and I spent an afternoon turning them into..... 

this!  It takes a surprisingly long time to wrap 24 gifts and sitting at the dining table on a hard wooden chair made my poor posterior rather numb because, of course, I didn't think to sit on a cushion 😕  I was able to pack them very neatly into one, larger, shopping bag which Adrian took round to Beverly's when he went into Kirkwall on Monday ~ so she had the "pleasure" of attaching them all to the hanger.  She said that she found it surprisingly difficult not to hang them in an orderly manner ~ she most definitely hasn't inherited my "randomness" genes 😂