Last post of 2012

And it is already 2013 in parts of the world. This seems strange.
I keep telling myself I AM a quilter and that life will return to normal come the installation of the kitchen. This is scheduled to start on the 14th of January, when they will spend a week removing the old kitchen, removing the tiles, rewiring for the new appliances and extra sockets and replastering. The following week they will install the new kitchen and template the worktops. And then finally the new worktops go in, the kitchen gets hand painted and the hob is installed, and the sink and taps go in. Yay!!! I have to admit I am dreading all this but not the end product.
I have started to move stuff out of the kitchen into the new dresser. This is what is known as trying to fit a quart into a pint pot.

I am so pleased to have discovered these lovely red boxes from Ikea. Not only do they help in making fewer trips from the kitchen to the dresser but I have also found they fit nicely into my American style fridge freezer. I knew these fridges were a bad design after I stayed in a friends house who had one but it was the only option for a 90cm wide space. Since then of course they have bought out French style ones which are also 90cm wide. When this one breaks down it WILL be replaced. In the meantime these boxes help incredibly.

Meanwhile the UK has had the wettest year on record and all of that was condensed into the last 8 months of the year. Everywhere is muddy, there have been landslips on the road leading down to Monmouth and Monmouth itself has been on Flood Alert for most of December and it doesn't seem as this will be changing shortly. Frank loves it!

We had been going to spend New Years Eve up at our pub but DH is not feeling 100% so we are being old codgers and staying in. We might not even make it to midnight.

Christmas is coming

Note to self: Never buy pressents which are hard to wrap. Imagine a round hat box.

A couple of people very sensibly suggested loads of pleats. This was fine until I got about half way round and the bulk of the folded paper grew too much. Plan B worked but it involved cutting the paper every inch, top and bottom and sticking it down every three folds. Those of you who have been following me know I have Fibromyalgia. One of the symptoms is neck ache if I bend my head too long. Let's just say I bent my head too long and now 24 hours later I am still paying for it.

I then cut a small circle out of card, a larger circle out of the wrapping paper, glued it over the card, then stuck it over the joins in the middle. Not perfect but it's done!

I had to wait for the dresser to arrive (see earlier post) before decorating the tree. I also needed help getting all the crap decorations down from the loft. It seems a lot of things must be in our storage container but there was enough around to decorate the tree and the staircase so that will have to be it for this year.

Wanda noticed the amarylis in the background in a previous post. The flowers lasted nearly four weeks as each had two stems. I cut them back and added (sin of sins) some fake amarylis and 'planted' them in the pots amongst the greenery. I think they seem quite Christmassy hanging in the window.