Week One!

Hello

Well I have survived "Week One" back at work, just about! 

It was far busier than I was hoping: we had two members of staff off sick

 all week and given that we are a small unit this has a huge impact on our workload. 

I have to admit that I woke up on Tuesday morning (just "Day Two" of "Week One") and 

checked with my husband that it was only Tuesday - oh boy, I was convinced/hoping it 

was Thursday - it certainly felt like it. 

But somehow I seemed to pick up as the week progressed and in the end I had quite a

 busy and productive home and social life.

Baking and cooking has occurred aplenty. Mince pies ...

 millionaire short bread (note the small piece top left, this is where I tried

 to be good and cut myself "just half")...

 (I never seem to be able to make 'pretty' millionaire shortbread, my 

pieces always end up different sizes and crumby)

 and son and I preparing fajitas for dinner.

I sent a very belated Christmas present to my friend overseas so decided to make

 it a Happy New Year present instead and trimmed my gift with a crochet flower and ribbon.

On other matters, I am always quite happy to take the Christmas decorations down and restore some sort of order to our house but you may remember I blogged at the beginning of December and January about a couple of little decorations I had made...

in particular the snowman on the right above...

 

and the little sheep in his scarf and hat!

I was reluctant to pack these away and decided they weren't so Christmassy that they 

needed to go away until next Christmas, but thought they probably need another decoration to 

keep them company - two isn't many is it?

So I decided to go with a distinctively winter theme for a third decoration!

I had seen this gorgeous little decoration on the blog of Le Chalet des Pérelles.

Isn't it delightful? But as I wanted a smaller decoration I decided to adapt it a little

 to cross stitch just the white tree and snowman. 

 This was an easy pattern as there were no half stitches or outlining to stitch...

 

so I made good progress during the week. 

And I finished the cross stitching this afternoon. I just need now to get my sewing 

machine out and complete the decoration ... as you can see below, backing fabric, 

ribbon and buttons have been chosen!

I can't wait to complete it!

 

 And on a completely different topic...

 - son's shoes - which as you can see were filthy! 

They needed plenty of elbow grease and shoe cream to restore them to something 

wearable and in order to give me an incentive to continue with the task and to 

help me realise quite what a good job I'd done with them, I concentrated on 

one shoe only to begin with - here's my 'before and after' comparison - looking 

at the photo I reckon I have done a pretty good job so far! 

One down, one to go!

And much of this home activity was undertaken in front of 

our stove.

We had this multifuel stove installed this summer and absolutely LOVE IT! 

It makes the room so warm and cosy and throws out a lovely golden glow. 

It encourages us all to sit together in the lounge while doing our various activities. 

NOTE: we also love the light shed by the fairy lights so decided not to put them 

away after Christmas. 

 Good job I'm not superstitious!

Have a good week

xXx 

P.S. And daughter's football team won their match today 3-2, onwards in the cup competition!