Snow, snow, snow

 

Christmas Every Day: Days 17-21

image from Freepik.com

Well, that's the shortest day over and done with ~ now we can look forward to the days very gradually getting longer 😉  Only a few days left now of Beverly's CED:

 

a second hot chocolate melt and Christmassy glass mug, to match Day 8...

Beverly really likes jigsaw puzzles and Lego, so I bought another of these wooden 3-D puzzles to match the sunflower one I got for her last year...

an "edible" treat ~ peanut butter and chocolate, what's not to love 😄...

very much a "practical" gift in the "kitchen paraphernalia" box ~ a pair of tea towels to match the oven gloves on Day 5...

yummy "edibles" ~ I confess I was very tempted to keep these to munch myself 😉

Our early Christmas dinner went without a hitch on Saturday, although as usual I completely missed the planned 1pm serving time 😄 Needless to say I also completely forgot to take photos of the Larkin Christmas Turkey, so I'll have to try to remember next year...but please don't hold your breath 😏

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)     

Little words of wisdom

 

Christmas Every Day: Days 13-16

image from Freepik

Good grief, 16th December ~ how can we be halfway through December already 😯  The days are racing away and soon it will be the shortest day, then comes the slow climb back up to more hours of daylight 😊  In the meantime, here's the next batch of Beverly's CED gifts:

she really loves Twiglets and told me that she was relieved to see them, as she would have been disappointed if there hadn't been any this year 😄

More "fancy toiletries" ~ another hessian lavender sachet along with a different scented soap...

both practical and decorative, I guess 😏

Another "edible".  I debated whether or not to get this bread mix as Beverly doesn't like olives ~ in the end I decided that she could just leave them out.  She told me that she might use sundried tomatoes instead which, to be honest, I think I would prefer to olives too.

I'm on the countdown to Christmas dinner ~ I think I told you that we were having it early with Beverly as she is working over Christmas.  I like to get most of the dinner prepared the day before, so I shall have to get the turkey joints and the accompaniments out of the freezer on Thursday.  If I remember, I'll take some photos to show you what I always make for Christmas dinner ~ I think I'd have a very disappointed family if I made something different!  

Peace...

 

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)    

Christmas Every Day: Days 6 - 12

image from Freepik

Here we are then, the next batch of little gifts for Beverly's CED:

"fancy toiletries" ~ the little hessian bag contains a lavender sachet...

"simply decorative" ~ I think that these little tealights are cherry scented but I couldn't swear to it as I've had them since last year 😄...

this one ticks three boxes, really: definitely "edible" and "practical", plus "simply decorative" as I should imagine the glass mug would only be used at Christmas-time really...

more "fancy toiletries"...

"edibles"...

very much a "practical" gift ~ Beverly was very pleased with this one as she said that she usually just uses a cotton bud...

and for Day 12 another "practical" gift 😊

I've had these socks since last year, too, as I got a bit ahead of myself and bought a few too many gifts ~ I've done the same again this year, but I suppose it does at least put me slightly ahead of the game for 2026 😄

Little words of wisdom

 

Downsizing.....

.....myself, not my craft room this time 😏 

I had to think long and hard about whether or not to talk about this publicly as it's a journey that I've attempted to make so many times over the last 50 years or so.  To be honest, I couldn't even begin to tell you how many times I've started a new weight-loss regime, none of which (obviously!) have lasted longer than a few weeks at most and with any weight I managed to lose rapidly piling back on again.  Actually, that's not entirely accurate in that I successfully lost about five stone back in around 2002.  However I got totally knocked off track and put all that weight back on again, plus a whole load more *sigh*

My health, though, over the past few years has not been good, with 2025 in particular seemingly being just one bloody thing after another 😒  It's become very apparent to me that each time I have a new health hiccup I'm just not "bouncing back", as it were, in quite the same way that I would have done when I was younger.  Now, I do realise that some of being rather less resilient than I might once have been will probably be down to getting older, but I'm also very aware that being so overweight really isn't helping my health situation in the slightest.

It's a bit sad, really, that I've allowed myself to just get bigger and bigger over these last 50-odd years, and I've often wondered if I would be as big as I am if I'd never actually tried to lose weight when I was young.  The photo above was taken in about 1983 (I was 22 years old) and at the time I thought that I was hugely overweight, even though I patently wasn't.  I was about 12 stone (168 pounds), which I realise would have put me in the overweight BMI category for my then height of 5'6" (I've since lost over an inch in height as I've got older 😳), but I certainly wasn't as big as I had convinced myself I was.  However, each time I attempted to get slimmer I just didn't seem able to stick with it and ended up being bigger than before.

Since I was a teenager I had compared myself unfavourably with my school friends, most of whom did indeed weigh less than me.  However, what had also never dawned on me was that I was also a fair bit taller than most of my friends, in fact during my early senior school years in particular I was taller than a lot of the boys in my year group too!  I think what cemented this feeling of being huge compared to the others was a maths lesson we had in our first year at senior school.  It was teaching us about averages, and the teacher in his wisdom decided that the ideal way to do this was by weighing every child in the class and dividing the total amount by the number of pupils.  Of course we all then knew how much each of us weighed and I was quite mortified to discover that at 8st 12lbs I was the second heaviest girl in the class!  Even now, over 50 years later, that "lesson" has stayed in my mind!

And I can also see that it didn't help growing up with a mother who was somewhat obsessed with being overweight herself.  I don't think I can really remember a time when Mum wasn't trying to lose weight on some diet plan or another.  But conversely she was also very much a "comfort-eater", a habit that I picked up too.  She was bigger than she perhaps should have been but again, like myself, she really wasn't as huge as she imagined herself to be.  Looking back I think that she was rather hung up on the fact that she was so much slimmer when she was first married, forgetting that she had three pregnancies over the course of five years and wasn't very well for the first two ~ I'm the eldest, with the child between myself and my sister sadly being stillborn ~ which I think triggered depression which she tried to damp down with comfort-eating.  There seem to have been a fair amount of overweight women on my Mum's side of the family, and whilst it would be sort of comforting to think that perhaps it's genetics, I rather suspect it's more of a learned behaviour and lifestyle issue!

So the upshot of this rather long post is just to say that 2026 has got to see me seriously tackling my weight issues.  I shall be 65 years old next June and I know that if I don't get to grips with this as a matter of some urgency, it really may become too late to change things.  The run-up to Christmas, though, is definitely not a good time to start a weight-loss campaign but what I can do over the next few weeks is carefully plan out what direction I should move in.  That way, once Christmas and the New Year are both out of the way, I will be ready to start the journey with no excuses 😉  I'm not sure if I will be brave enough to share with you my actual weight, certainly not to start with anyway, but I will share how things are progressing.  I'm hoping that there will be plenty of "ups" to tell you about, but I will be honest about the not-so-good times too 😊

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)     

Christmas Every Day: Days 2, 3, 4 & 5

image from Freepik

As promised here are the gifts for days 2, 3, 4 and 5 of Beverly's CED:

She has two cats, so virtually anything cat-themed is a safe bet!  This was one of the little gifts I bought when we were in Leeds visiting Sam in September, and it sits squarely in the "simply decorative" box...

the first of the "fancy toiletries"...

some more "edibles"...

and a piece of "kitchen paraphernalia" that ticks the "practical" box, too 😉

More to come next week!

I woke up at stupid-o'clock yesterday and just couldn't get back to sleep, not least because my nose decided to be very annoying by sneezing and running in never-ending copious amounts 😒 Being the lovely wife that I am (😄) I decided to get up so that I didn't keep Adrian awake.  It's not often that I'm up early enough to see the start of the sunrise, even at this time of year, so thought I'd better take a photo to commemorate this unusual occurrence 😉  

Little words of wisdom

 

Christmas Every Day: Day 1

image from Freepik

I was extremely organised over the weekend and got all our Christmas cards written, plus a gift parcelled up ~ I know, right, it's hard to believe I can be so organised, eh 😏

Anyhoo, whilst I was parcelling up said gift it occurred to me that over all the years that I've been doing this "Christmas-every-day" malarky (hereinafter known simply as CED 😉) for Beverly, I've never actually shown you the little bits and pieces that I gather together over the year that make up the CED.  Obviously I can't show you the gifts before they are wrapped, just on the off-chance that Beverly might take it into her head to actually read her mother's blog for once 😄  I can, though, share them with you once she has opened the gift-of-the-day, so that's what I'm going to do during this month.  Luckily I'll be able to purloin photos of said gifts from Beverly's Facebook page as she posts them each day ~ I'll probably post two or three days of the gifts at a time, though, so that I don't swamp the blog 😉

To be quite honest, I've been surprised by just how much her friends enjoy this rod-for-my-back tradition, and really seem to look forward to it each December!  Some of them have commented about how they really like the idea, but I confess that I've tried to discourage them from starting the tradition themselves unless they really love trying to think of 24 little things to buy each year 😄  Not quite so hard buying for a small child, I suppose, but definitely not quite so easy for an adult ~ especially trying to find little things that are reasonably priced, considering there will be 24 of them!

I try to remember to look out for suitable gifts over the course of the year, especially when we travel south.  This year, for instance, I was able to get a few bits 'n' bobs when we visited Sam in Leeds.  I try to aim for a mixture of things: practical, edible, and just simply decorative.  The "practical" stuff tends to be fancy toiletries, little items of kitchen paraphernalia, and just plain useful things.  The edible and decorative stuff varies from year-to-year, although I do try not to get too many purely decorative things if possible.  Of course the edibles can't be bought too far in advance!  By the time November rolls around, though, I usually know how many days I don't have anything for, so edibles fill those gaps very nicely.

Oh, and just in case you're wondering what we do for Sam, he gets two parcels of "edibles" every year 😏

One is a hamper of Orkney foodstuffs from Jollys of Orkney ~ I go for the make-your-own option.  This year I chose Orkney coffee (Jolly's blend), Orkney smoked cheddar (one cracked pepper, one sweet chilli, and the third red onion), smoked garlic bulbs, Orkney caramelised onion biscuits, Orkney butter shortbread, extra mature Orkney cheddar, Westray Chutney (spiced pepper), Orkney butter, Westray flakey biscuits, Stockan's mini oatcakes (one cracked black pepper, the other cheese), and finally Orkney Isles Preserves spicy tomato and onion relish.  As you can see, there's a LOT of cheeses in there ~ my son certainly does love a bit of cheese 😄  He loves Orkney butter, too, so I included three packs this year!

We also get him a selection of beers, sent down from the Orkney Brewery.  I'm afraid I can't tell you what he's had this year as Adrian arranged it and I can't remember now what he said he'd ordered!  Oh, and by the way, it's perfectly okay for me to tell you about the hamper and beer for Sam as firstly I don't think he's ever read my blog in his life, and secondly we arranged for them to be sent early this year (so that things weren't sold out, like the butter was last year by the time I'd got round to making up the hamper!) so he's already received them 😉

So, back to Christmas-Every-Day for Beverly.....she hasn't posted today's little gift yet but here's what she unwrapped yesterday:

Reading round-up: November 2025

image from Clipart Library

The Stoneware Monkey (a Dr Thorndyke novel - British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

Mr Polton Explains (a Dr Thorndyke novel - British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

The Jacob Street Mystery (The Unconscious Witness) (a Dr Thorndyke novel - British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

OTHER NOVELS:

The Golden Pool: A Story of a Forgotten Mine (British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

The Unwilling Adventurer (British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

The Uttermost Farthing (A Savant's Vendetta) (British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

As you can see I have come to the end of the Dr Thorndyke novels and am now making my way through R. Austin Freeman's other offerings in this seemingly never-ending collection 😳  I must confess that I'm not enjoying these as much as I did the Dr Thorndyke books.  There are only three more left in the collection, nevertheless I think I may put them to one side for the time being and read something different!  I've recently bought a few new books, including the latest novels in two series that I really enjoy, so I'm very tempted to abandon poor old Mr Austin Freeman for pastures new ~ plus I still have a humungous pile of magazines to work my way through!