In between rushing around Emily and I have done lots more crafty things. Emily made these beautiful Christmas figures, four painted and decoupaged wooden ones, plus the two red "tomte" Christmas girls which were cut from a pattern and stitched.
She has also been making lots of funky baubles out of recycled cards cut into circles and stapled/glued together, and she made a load of paper snowflakes for the festival tree too. And there are still dozens more crafty things in the pipeline - can't believe there's only one full week left to fit them in!
Friday last week was great fun; Jackie and her girls came over for the day and amid much gossiping (grown ups) and hide-and-seeking (girls) we painted various cling-filmed baking trays with paint mixed with pva glue, in the hope that it would have set by tomorrow, to be used in stained glass art. It has taken nearly all week to set, mind you, not the 24 hours it was supposed to take, but it's finally done, so tomorrow Emily and I will take the various now rubbery sheets over to Jackie's for stage two of the process. Should be interesting. Last week the girls also did some festive sewing, producing two lovely stuffed snowmen (Emily's is in the pictures above, hiding behind two wooden figures) and a stuffed penguin.
The weekend passed in yet another blur of deadline meeting. On Monday we went swimming, having missed a fortnight's worth of swimming due to the utter chaos that passes for daily life. Daddy carved time out if his workload to come with us and watch Emily demonstrating her newly acquired skills. He was very impressed and proud :-)) The last yoga lesson of the year was on Tuesday afternoon, although there's still the dress rehearsal for the play and the play itself on Sunday afternoon. On Wednesday afternoon we went for a lovely play at Romy's house, which was good fun. And isn't it cold?? It made me laugh yesterday morning - Emily woke up, took one look out of her window at the heavy frost, threw on her clothes and ran out to take pictures of the garden. While I sat smugly thinking of the parents and kids struggling through the icy roads to school while we could go out just because we *wanted* to, not because we *had* to. Although we do have lots of blossom on the cherry tree that Emily planted near Merlin's grave. Weird seasons.
This morning Emily should have gone to tai chi, but she woke up with a horrible temperature and raging sore throat, so that was out of the question. Ditto with our planned cinema trip this afternoon - although she's feeling quite a bit better now, and has made scrummy cranberry muffins this afternoon.
Fingers crossed then that Emily will be OK for Jackie's tomorrow, followed by the karate Christmas party on Saturday, followed by her karate grading on Sunday morning and then yoga play on Sunday afternoon.
Jon's being told off at every opportunity by his father at the moment, because he (Jon) hasn't yet chosen, sourced and bought all of Grandad's Christmas presents for everyone else, including himself. Yes. Grandad doesn't even bother to put any thought into what anyone would like, he just commands the whole thing done for him. We even have to wrap the bloody things up. Jon had literally only just walked off the top step into our study having come home from tai chi this morning, and was going to see how Emily was, when his father yelled up the stairs that he was waiting to go food shopping and how much *longer* was Jon going to be. Woe betide anyone who mixes up their priorities - Grandad comes first, poorly child or not. Mind you, as I've just returned from a horrible drive to pick up Grandad's prescription, which couldn't *possibly* wait even though he has enough medication for another fortnight, during which journey the car skidded nastily on an icy country road and gave me an awful fright - I'm not in the most benign of moods towards certain people just now.
On a more interesting note, on Monday night I went out in the dark to take a picture of some new garden lights I was trying out ahead of Emily's birthday party. Caught this weird mist on the first photo. Click on it for a better picture. One the second picture, taken seconds later, there's nothing there. It wasn't my breath because I then deliberately tried breathing in front of the camera to see if that could be it. It wasn't misty, and I hadn't seen the mist with the naked eye. Spooky!
And in other random pics, here are our three Big Cats in a rare "together" photo opportunity over the weekend when it was pouring with rain and they all wanted to go out - but didn't want to go out. Cassandra, Juliet and Romeo. Plus one of just Mr Pome and JuJu together as they looked so cute and brother/sisterly :-)
Plus here we have Voldemort playing with (and trying to eat) my plait - he has a thing about hair. Plus Voldemort demonstrating why it's hard to get much done at weekends - I sit staring at the screen waiting for inspiration to strike and help me write "stuff" to meet deadlines. And he sits there looking cute. Not distracting at all. And Severus, fighting with a ball of wrapping paper. Naturally. Both kibbies are doing very well. The shaven patches from their neutering are growing back very fast. Both are still desperate to go out. Grrrmpph.
Speaking of kibbies - Severus made friends with a cranberry this afternoon while Emily was cooking. In scenes extremely reminiscent of Romeo's Love Affair With a Sultana over two years ago, Sev absolutely loved that Cranberry. [Edit: I can't get the hang of linking to former blog posts. I've changed the link now so it points to October 05; for anyone interested, the Romeo/Sultana epic is about a third of the way down the page on October 23rd. And my word, don't Romeo and Juliet look sweet as kittens still!) Unfortunately, Sev's cranberry was lost beneath a skirting board before I had a chance to grab the camera and document the touching scenes. Never mind Sev. The rest of the cranberries had already been sacrificed in the muffins. We'll get you another one soon, promise.
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