Home Day

Thursday this week, was one of my days off, and after the Christmas meal the previous evening, I was very happy to stay home and catch up with things around the house. With just one week left until we go up to Yorkshire, I needed to spend some time on laundry, so that I can start to get packed.

I'm working right up until the day we leave, so I want to pack most of what I need well before our day of departure, so we can get an early start on the journey, which I anticipate will be long and possibly busy on the roads.

After a pretty awful night's sleep on account of noisy people wheeling suitcases and talking at loud volume at 5.30 am in the street outside, I got up and went out with the dog. Just as I stepped out of the front door, I had a lucky encounter with a neighbour, who was snipping branches off a holly bush which was on the back of a lorry.  It had been cut out of someone's garden and was about to be hauled away.  I asked her to cut me a few stems too, and I picked a couple of flowering ivy stems on my dog walk, to make this very simple arrangement when I got home. 

I probably won't need to buy any Christmas flowers or foliage now, which will save a few pounds.

Anyway, I hurried off to catch what turned out to be my last Zumba class of the year.  I wasn't really in the mood for it, but felt better afterwards, as it blew some cobwebs away. It was also nice to see some people that I wanted to wish a Happy Christmas to.

The rest of the morning and afternoon was spent at home.  I had a parcel coming from ASOS.  I had used a £5 loyalty voucher towards a new inexpensive watch (don't ask, me and watches are a disastrous combination).  Anyway, I settled for this Casio one.  Very simple and functional, which is all I need.  I just can't function well without a watch.

I also added a couple of small bits to the order to qualify for free shipping; some more sports socks for LB and a small gift for her birthday in January.  I received a small gift myself in the box.  These coconut and almond chocolates, which was a nice surprise.

It was a day of receiving other parcels in the post too, as I'd ordered a couple of small things on eBay, one of which was this book, which will be my holiday reading this Christmas.

Once my parcels had arrived, LB had come home, I'd made a DIY ugly Christmas jumper for Christmas Jumper Day at work and I'd caught up with some housework, we then decided to go to the local mall after an early supper and do some last minute Christmas shopping (well, OH's last minute Xmas shopping to be exact, to look for/at phones for me!).

The mall was okay considering how close it was to Christmas, but it was a useful outing as a couple of phones did appeal to me. All in all a pretty productive day. By the way, here's a picture of the Christmas jumper.

I didn't have a star for the top of the tree, so a brooch had to do. It worked great except that despite carefully sewing all the baubles on, three of them still came off and had to be reattached with safety pins.  A bit of a punk rock Christmas jumper in the end. Never mind, at least it didn't cost anything to make. OH, incidentally, hated it and made me promise never to wear it in his company.  Grinch!