Looking Forward To 2017

 


Well, I hope you all had a wonderful relaxing Christmas and a great start to the New Year. We had a very quiet time which was lovely although the days seemed to fly by. Maybe it's because we're getting older or maybe it's because the build up to Christmas begins earlier each year that the actual day just whizzes past in a bit of a blur.

We were hammered by Storm Barbara just before Christmas which was followed very closely by Storm Conor. Hopefully none of you were too badly hit by the storms; outside we were mostly unaffected except for a rotten gatepost which finally succumbed and a couple of uprooted small silver birch trees in the woods. Unfortunately the biggest casualty was an electrical box associated with the wind turbine; part of it melted on Christmas Eve and we had to turn off the internal generator box. You can probably tell I'm not really familiar with all the technical terms but essentially we were able to watch the turbine turning merrily away while we couldn't use the electricity. Slightly annoying but hey ho I guess that's just one of those things we'll get sorted sometime soon.

Due to the strong winds we took our Christmas beach walk on the 23rd rather than Christmas day. M took a little video from the top of the sand dunes where we were trying to shelter from the wind but I think it captures the sound of the approaching storm pretty well. Surprisingly we weren't the only crazy people out for a walk and although it was hard going we all (possibly Jess and Finn more) felt thoroughly revitalised and refreshed afterwards.

M's birthday lies between Christmas and New Year and we managed to get a table at our favourite restaurant just a few minutes away. The food is glorious and we have discovered (from previous experience) that we can only handle one course so it was steak for the birthday boy and a very posh chicken burger for me - totally delicious. 

New Adventures

After all the fun of Christmas I always find that it is quite cathartic to clear away all the decorations and get the house back to some form of normality and properly cleaned. Thankfully this only normally takes us a few hours so it's not an arduous task but it feels very rewarding.

January can feel like a really frustrating time of year for me, I am desperate to get outside after all the dark evenings and start sowing seeds in anticipation of lighter and warmer spring days. But I have to take a deep breath and acknowledge that it's still too early and too cold for pretty much all seed sowing. So January is the time to open the new diary and look forward to the year ahead. I love the Dairy Diary as it shows each week over 2 pages, has just enough room for me to jot down everything we have been up to and it also has some beautiful weekly recipes. This is where I got the recipe for the totally amazing cheese and chorizo scones, now M's favourite snack.

I will have to content myself with evenings curled up by the fire, catching up on some knitting projects and planning the flower, fruit and veg plots for the year ahead. One of my aims this month is to finish off some of the many half finished projects I have accumulated over the past 10 years. I'm feeling quite chuffed that I managed to finish this scarf which I found at the bottom of a plastic bag. I have no idea when I started this but eventually, it's done - yay!! Now onto the next one.....

I've been following Christine's sockalong and Winwick Mum blog for a while and have been desperately wanting to have a go at knitting some socks; I even got as far as buying some sock wool and circular needles last October. I got this book for Christmas and cannot wait to get started; I just need to keep telling myself that I need to finish off some other items before I begin. Hopefully it won't be too long before I have some photos of socks in progress.

For a long time M has talked of having a go at some wood whittling and given the large amount of wood we have it only took a little nudge to get him going. He got a book on whittling for Christmas and off he went, one little owl and a beautiful tactile letter opener. I suspect this is not the end of this hobby.

As I write this we are in the midst of another horrible storm although for some reason it hasn't got a name. We are being pelted by rain, hail and sleet with 50mph winds and expect to see our first snowfall of the year tomorrow. So as we snuggle down with the fire lit to continue our journey through the Wallander box set I wish you all a very Happy New Year.