A Good Start To The New Year!

 Happy New Year everyone, I hope that you all had a great Christmas and that you enjoyed your New Year Celebrations. 

My Christmas was very hectic and extremity tiring, like I said in my last post I was hosting this year and if you are the one preparing the lunch I don't think you can enjoy it yourself, you're too busy making sure that everything comes together at the same time and the food is served hot. When you tell your family to be here at 1pm and one half come at two and the other half at three that doesn't help either especially as I had the food ready by 1 30. I can't even remember what my meal tasted like I gulped it down so quickly, but the family enjoyed it and Mikey enjoyed the scavenger hunt I'd planned for him and my eldest son enjoyed his birthday cake so that's all that matters. I had son number two and family on boxing day but thankfully that was a more laid back affair.

It's all forgotten because it's now in the past and we move on to this New Year and on New Years Day my first little granddaughter was born, how special is that! My son and daughter in law decided that it would be better for the baby to be born in her Mothers country South Korea as they were so impressed with the health care there,  my son will stay till the end of the month before going back to Qatar, and Minju will follow him when the babies a little bit older. He is besotted with her already it's going to be so hard for him to leave her.

The care she is receiving is amazing, following the birth she and my son have gone into a postpartum care centre for two weeks where they are given  guidance on how to look after the baby and the Mother is closely monitored to make sure she is recovering well from the birth. 

Meet little Sophie

Welcome to the world little one 😊

I just want to give her a cuddle but unfortunately it will be a while before I get to meet her in person.

More coming later have a great week ahead. 

Happy Christmas!

 

Wishing all of  my lovely blogging friends a very happy and peaceful Christmas, xx

Christmas This Year

 Is it just me or are the years speeding by that much quicker? it doesn't seem five minutes since it was last Christmas and here we are again with just a few days left until the big day. I am hosting Christmas this year, I don't know how it happened but there you go, I haven't hosted Christmas since I moved into this tiny house of mine and I'm wondering how we are going to manage it, but all the family won't be present as son number two and family will be spending Christmas with his in-laws and son number three is at present in South Korea awaiting the birth of his first child! yes you heard right my baby son is going to be a Daddy, ok well not quite the baby anymore but hey they are always your babies aren't they?  Minju my beautiful daughter in law is due at the beginning of January and.... it's going to be a girl!!! my first granddaughter😊I wish they lived closer and I wish I could be there at the birth but there you go I'm just hoping all will go well and I can't wait to see pictures/video's of her.

So there will be six adults a child and a baby spending Christmas in my tiny abode, I'm trying to push things into the garage to make more space and I'm making a plan, a floor plan and an everything else plan so it should be ok, past Christmases haven't gone that well for me as you can read in this post written  8 years ago! but now I'm going to play the old lady/bad back card and hopefully everyone will be here on time and do their bit to help, wish me luck!

The lead up to Christmas has been filled with lots of festive crafting...

Baubles Galore.

One of the ladies in my crochet group came up with the brilliant idea of using plastic pool balls as a base for Christmas baubles since then there has been no let up and bauble mania has taken hold.  I honestly can't tell you have many we have made..

from these

to these

Once you get going you get hooked literally😆Why so many you may ask? well we have been giving the Marina some festive cheer...

and of course we wanted some for ourselves, they look great strung up with my Christmas pictures

and hanging on the tree, I like my tree to have traditional colours as you can see, I knit the little santa's when I was living in Syria, they must be over 40 years old! I taught my sisters in law how to knit them too and apparently they are still making them to this day. I love how tree ornaments bring back so many happy memories don't you? it seems like the modern trend is to change them each year with different colours to match the decor, each to their own but I think I'm now to old to change.

The baubles are easily made without a pattern but there are some lovely bauble patterns out there, I used the patterns from this website and there is a lot of choice.

Christmas Trees

These little trees seem to be very popular this year you can see them on all the social media sites and I'm not surprised because they are so easy! a christmas tree made out of a granny square, I have made lots of these as well, even small ones to hang onto gifts, the possibilities are endless, I did decorate some with beads and silver charms but forgot to take a photo. I popped them inside Christmas cards to give as a little gift.

Here they are hanging with trees of Christmases past.

You can find the how to here.

Remember the Penguin I mentioned in the last post? well here he is all ready to be gifted to grandson number three, little Louis, I have a feeling that after a quick cuddle he'll get thrown on the floor but I'm sure Louis's Mummy will rescue him and put him away and bring him out each Christmas.

I have been sewing too, a little Christmas tree embroidery hoop..

There is much more, the u3a crafting groups have been making all sorts of Christmas things to raise finds for charities but more about that later.

Have a great Sunday 😘😘