Dashing through the preparations...

 Yes, I'm still alive and my finger hasn't fallen off!! Typing was extremely uncomfortable for quite a while there and there was so much else I needed to get done that I fell off the blogging radar temporarily. But I'm back, with lots to tell. I have of course been thrifting at the charity shops recently. I bought some vintage baubles on Friday, just in time for the tree going up. We don't normally put the tree up so early but we had some friends round for a pre Xmas get together on Saturday so we had to push the boat out and decorate the house to its full potential. Will try to get some decent photos (so far I have failed miserably).

I just about managed to feed our friends, even though I had no working hob. This proved fairly interesting when I went to buy the food for the evening - was I to grab lots of party food and do a buffet? No, I did a full on roast dinner, I don't do things by halves. My lovely husband set up the camping stove on top of the defunct hob so I could make the gravy and we had foil trays full of potatoes in goose fat and winter roasted vegetables ready to bung in the oven (good old Waitrose). A couple of roasted chickens and some cocktail sausages and we were ready to feed the troops. We had a great evening, lovely to catch up with old friends but we were so shattered yesterday. My youngest was on a sleepover that night too so it was a day of lounging around doing nothing yesterday, that's for sure. Still feeling exhausted today, must drink more tea.

The reason I had no hob was because we had some new worktop fitted last weekend and the new hob is yet to be connected. The ancient hob and yucky brown plastic sink have vanished - hooray! Will provide photos of kitchen progress soon. A fair few tiles fell off the wall whilst the old worktop was removed so we have a tiling session planned for the New Year. I think the kitchen project may be a slow burner as there is so much still left to do and so little time to do it all in. In the meantime, I am making the most of stroking the beautiful new worktop and admiring the clean and shiny new sink and tap. Yes, I am a sad person!

As you may have noticed, I have acquired a new cabinet, the before photo being above. It was sat outside my favourite charity shop with a very reasonable £5 price tag on it. I snapped it up and just about managed to squeeze it into the car boot. Having pondered what to do with it (other than give it a good old clean) I decided to use my paperchase wrapping paper, bought for a mere 9 pence per sheet in the sales a couple of months ago. I've literally just cut it to size and blu tacked it onto the back of the cabinet. I've got plenty more of this wrapping paper, which I have squirrelled away for another project. I think this simple 5 minute job has really given this cabinet a new lease of life.

I have also been trying to take some festive shots, but as I said earlier, I have failed miserably. Really must try harder:

In case you can't tell, it's a pot full of holly cut from the garden to decorate the table on Saturday night. I did try. Honest.

Eldest daughter and I had a competition to see who could build the best structure out of mini marshmallows and cocktail sticks (thanks to Miriam of Make it give it let it shine for the idea). Needless to say, E won with her very accurate structure below. Let's just say mine was a lot more organic and... wibbly! Great fun, will definitely be doing this again over the Xmas hols.

 And here is a photo of my cabinet in use and in Xmas mode.

So that's what I've been up to over the past few weeks, other than my car getting a flat tyre last week. I pulled over and got my mobile out, discovered that my sim card had packed up, so I had to hike along muddy grass verges all the way to school to collect the kids and then return later in the dark, wind and rain to recover the car with my OH who very kindly changed the tyre for me. Let's just say it was an interesting day and as I trudged through the muddy verges getting increasingly cold, I counted my blessings. At least it wasn't raining and we were very lucky to get a lift home from one of the Mums at school.

Before I go, I also must mention that I was the extremely lucky winner of a giveaway over at nomoredisco. The lovely Amy was so generous in offering a choice of one of 3 books, one of which was a copy of 200 crochet blocks, which I chose. I have had a good old flick through this book several times and I'm really looking forward to having a go at a few of these blocks over the Xmas holidays. Thanks again Amy, much appreciated. If you get a chance, do pop over to her blog.

So, just one more week of school (youngest is performing in a strings orchestra this afternoon, eldest has a speaking part in the Christmas play, which is being performed 3 times this week), one more week until my gorgeous sister gets married, one more week to get all last minute preps for the wedding done (eeek!) and one more week until we can all collapse on the sofa and enjoy some down time. So much to look forward to over the next few days but I think we will all be flying by the seat of our pants! Until next time... xxxx