Monday, December 31, 2012

Out With The Old...

It's now New Years Eve - only because we have chronic insomnia in our house tonight - ordinarily we'd be asleep at this hour!  But since we're awake, here's a quick photo tour of the last couple of days...

HAHAHAHAHA!  We've done a lot of this, and a lot of tv watching and reading and not much actual 'doing' of anything.

We found this little sweetheart at the pet store while we were waiting for movie time to come around.

How cute is she?  I have to be careful, I'm very pet vulnerable at the moment!  We could end up with a zoo in our house!


Last evening we went to the town centre to visit the Centennial Bonfire.  Love how it was next to the Christmas Tree! 

and here's an arty late night shot of my current knitting project and my beautiful new yarn bowl.

After we've got some sleep, we're planning an 'out with the old' day, checking our resolutions that we made at the start of the year, seeing how far we got with them, and cleaning the house up a bit, ready for the next year's arrival in about 21 hours from now.  It's been the toughest year of our lives, and next year may be much harder, but we're heading into it with as much courage as we can muster! 

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Visions of sugarplums...

It feels like a long time since we harvested delicious fruit from the garden and the hedgerow, but a dear friend asked me today about sugarplums, and so here's a picture or two of the pretties from our garden...

apples and sugarplums from the garden, blackberries from the local hedgerows.

they're so pretty! 

In investigating sugarplums, I have learned that the 'sugarplums' from the Night Before Christmas are actually not plums at all, but plum-shaped confections made from chopped dried fruit and nuts and rolled in sugar to make them pretty!  Who knew?  Looks like we might have to make some of those soon, since our tree plums were eaten up months ago! 

It's a quiet day with the Aga today, we're hanging out at home, the fire will be going as soon as I'm done chatting to you, and we'll be reading and knitting and resting and healing.  We have vague plans to make mince pies later, but we'll see... 

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Resting

Happy Boxing Day!  

It's been a pretty intense few months here at the Scally house, but today we are resting.  Tea, knitting, movies, books, blankets, footstools, comfy pillows - all of these things are featuring heavily in our day today.

So, in lieu of all the posts I haven't written over the last 3 months, here's a quick photo tour of life at our house...

We've had yummy autumnal dinners.

We've made beautiful cupcakes that look like adorable shoes!

Caity made most of them, but this super-sparkly pair were made by Becca! 

Caity made a cute gingerbread village for Hallowe'en.

We celebrated Thanksgiving!

We made felted slippers.

and snuggly warm socks.

and beautiful squishy wraps. 

The fuschias in the window box woke up early for spring!

We festooned the inside of the house with fairy lights. 

We made a tower out of Christmas Crackers. 

We dragged a tree into the house and made it look beautiful!

We were spoiled rotten by lovely friends! 

We made Ninjabread cookies - the girls decorated them so well, they're hilarious, and they taste great, too!

Here's a ninja cowboy! 

Santa came and filled the girls Christmas sacks with fun gifts. 

Caity got a GIANT teddy bear!

Snowglobes and nutcrackers arrived, just like every year. 

and the table looked beautiful for Christmas dinner. 
There's been a lot happening, and there's a lot more where that came from - hopefully it won't be three months before you hear about it all!