At home

December has a habit of creeping up on me, which is mostly my own fault for skipping off and forgetting about real life for a while in late November.

We came home to find the first card on the mat from our sweet friend Sandy in Tasmania, who is so organised, she probably wrote her cards in July or something.  Seeing it was a very cool reminder that really, I need to get a bit of a jingle on!

But a house with no food isn’t a home, is it?  And it’s impossible to make a Christmas cake without the ingredients.  So, first thing on Thursday I went shopping. 

Thursday afternoon, I made a start and measured out the fruit to soak in the rum.  So far it’s drunk half a bottle!

Then there were other errands to run, prescriptions to collect and Advent Calendars to post.  Whilst I was in the post office queue, I thought I’d buy the Christmas stamps too and felt good about remembering to get them whilst there were still some of the special designs left.  But I wonder why the Royal Mail decided not to issue a Christmas design for the European stamp this year?  Our friends in Europe will have the usual portrait of HMQ instead and I’ll have to do what I can to jolly up the envelopes myself.

Today, I was putting some of my new-found skills into practice as I began work on our Christmas cards for this year.  I’d been thinking over a few ideas whilst we were away and this morning, sat down and started to play with the stitch design feature of my machine.

In no time at all, I was ready to give it a test run, so having saved it all to the USB stick as well as the machine memory – just in case - out came the red embroidery thread and the gold embroidery needles I’d bought in JoAnns last week.

Just as all was set and ready to go, I heard a shout from my hero, though, who was busy laying a wooden floor in an upstairs bedroom.  As I went to the stairs to see what’s what, I saw him coming down holding his hand… 

A nasty cut to his finger leaves him hors de combat for the weekend but thankfully, no permanent damage is done.  His visit to the Minor Injuries unit in Cirencester combined nicely with my hairdressing appointment and took less time than a cut and blow dry.  But he’s finding  single handed typing a challenge and it looks like I’ll be doing the driving for a few days.

So what became of the Christmas stitch?  You’ll just have to wait and see!