Christmas-Every-Day

image from Freepik

I trundled over to Kirkwall yesterday to pay my annual "Mother Christmas" visit to Beverly, where I then spend time hanging the fruits of my gift-wrapping endeavours for her to open one each day during December.  It's a rod I made for my own back tradition that I started a good number of years ago, before Adrian and I moved up to Orkney.  Beverly very rarely came south for Christmas, a combination of her working shift patterns and the unpredictability of the weather for travelling at that time of year.  I came across the idea when I was idly surfing Pinterest one day, and thought it would be a lovely idea to do for Beverly to remind her that we were thinking of her even if we couldn't be together 😊

I can't show you all the little gifts laid out ready for wrapping, just in case Beverly takes it into her head to read my blog for once 😉  Suffice to say, the two bags above were stuffed with all the little goodies I came across for this years Christmas-Every-Day.  I keep wondering when she will grow out of it but she shows no sign of doing so thus far ~ and she'll be 34 at the end of this coming January 😏

Ta-daa ~ everything hung up ready for this year's tradition to begin!  It didn't take too long to get the job done, despite the "assistance" of Belle, one of my grandkitties 😉  The cats are also the reason why the little parcels are rather bunched up, rather than dangling more elegantly 😄

Adrian and I had both planned on going to see Beverly but unfortunately he wasn't feeling too well.  He had the first of the two shingles vaccinations on Wednesday and it's left him feeling very tired and "flu-ey".  He would normally have carried the stash of little gifts for me, of course, but I was able to get everything packed into my trusty shopping trolley.  There was plenty of room on the bus over to Kirkwall, so I had a seat near the front and tucked my trolley in beside me 😊

I had a lovely couple of hours with Beverly, and got the 12.26pm bus home again.  I get on and off the bus at Tesco in Kirkwall, and I suppose it takes me about 10 minutes or so to walk from there to her flat.  By the time I'd got home and had some lunch, I didn't really feel like doing much else so had a lazy afternoon.

I did finally get something done with my little air plants, though.  I bought them when we were down south back in September, and managed to get them home unscathed!  I propped them up in a pot with one of my succulents until I'd decided how to display them ~ and there they sat for three months 😏  As you know I'm currently sorting out my craft room (aka the dumping ground 😉), and in one of the boxes I was emptying out I found the perfect little vintage container for them.  It was something I came across when I was sorting through stuff at Mum and Dad's earlier in the year.  Dad had no use for it and said I was welcome to take it 😊

It's stamped on the base "Hillstonia" and although I haven't been able to find much information online, it would appear to have been made by a company called Moira Pottery.  I was a little confused when I read the Wikipedia article as it said that the Hillstonia range was for forcing bulbs and containing plants ~ I couldn't quite see how you could get bulbs into the very slender opening along the top of the container!  However after I did a general search for Hillstonia pottery, I came across an identical container to the one I have on Etsy.  The seller there describes it as a posy vase, which makes much more sense 😄

I don't know where my Mum got it from but I suspect it came from my Great Aunt Mary, who had some interesting items.  I now have a number of things that were both hers and my Grandma's (Mary's older sister), none of which are worth very much monetarily but are nevertheless a lovely link to that older generation.

My little air plants sit in the posy vase beautifully, with that narrow opening firmly holding them upright.  I've placed it on the kitchen windowsill, which should hopefully remind me to check them regularly to see if they need spraying/soaking!