saturday afternoon

We were having a conversation over on the Tales from the Village Facebook page about Christmas addiction. I accidentally fell into the shops this week and came out with armfuls of decorations, scented candles, Christmas bunting, paper chain kits, and beautiful hand-decorated glass baubles. This is pretty restrained by my standards – I’ve been known to have a sneaky play of the Christmas music in September. I’m so excited about our first Christmas in this big Victorian seaside house, where I can buy a ten foot high Christmas tree because the ceilings are ridiculously high, and cover the place in holly and ivy from the garden.

So Saturday afternoon – following a very cold but productive spot of gardening and a chat with Monty Don on Twitter (I KNOW – eek! see FB page for details) – brings a heap of Christmas magazines, with children otherwise occupied. Hot chocolate and a huge fluffy fleece blanket (first gas bill arrived this morning and hooray, we’ve used less than they estimated, so it looks like our wear-lots-of-jumpers-and-snuggle-under-blankets plans are working). And a glorious programme on Radio 4 about The Smiths.

My favourite is Ideal Home’s Complete Guide to Christmas – partly because for me buying it signals the beginning of my once yearly Christmasfest, and this year because my friend Heather was editor and that’s quite exciting.

We can’t have a fire because the chimney needs to be lined first (anyone any idea how much that costs?) but the cast iron fireplace is so beautiful it looks lovely with candles. I love this house SO much.

Sneaky peek at some of the decorations – I realised this morning when I dug out all the fairy lights to test them that I may need some kind of rehabilitation programme, or a generator of my own.

Whilst on a Smiths theme, I’ve just seen these on Twitter: Smiths songs as Penguin book covers which aren’t available as prints yet but ooh, when they are, I’m buying some.

This is a bit of a Saturday ramble, isn’t it? It’s like an email to a friend. I’ll shut up now.

Oh before I forget! Winner of the not-in-the-UK part of the Martha Stewart giveaway was not-in-the-UK commenter no.1, Linda from Canada.

And the winner of the in-the-UK part is (drumroll)

commenter no. 3, Mrs Pao from the lovely mumblings blog.

I’ll get the loveliness in the post on Monday for you both. Happy organising!