It's Official - It's Christmas!

Debbie finished at work yesterday for Chritsmas so now we're both at home for the feastive holidays, we can relax, chill out and let the Christmas spirit wash over us...

Well after one final push this morning, up at 5am to beat the crowds at the supermarket and into town for a trolley full of frozen goodies.

Debbie's full of cold at the moment and is currently chilling out on the sofa, somthing she's been dreaming about all week, not having had a break since the Summer. The plan for the rest of the afternoon is nothing, zilch, didly squat, we're on strike and aint moving until tomorrow!

Paul.

A Very Cold Old Moor

Yesterday I popped down to Old Moor, our local RSPB reserve, it was bloody freezing! Parts of the main lake were still fozen even thought it was late afternoon and much of the grass was still white with frost.

It was a beautiful afternoon with the golden brown colours in the low winter sunshine. Here's a few snaps I got while I was down there, including Mr & Mrs Mallard doing their Torvil & Dean impression...

As ever, there's many more pictures on our Flickr page.


Paul.

Frosty Start

I finished work for the Christmas break on Monday, I've been doing a few jobs arround the house, getting everything in order for the propper holiday when Debbie finishes work on Thursday.

Thankfully all that wet n windy weather has gone away and has been replaced by much more seasonal frosty mornings and clear blue skies.

I'm just having a surf around at the moment, just waiting for the temperature to get above 5 degrees before venturing outside to fix the bird table that was blown over last week. I'll also put that fork away that I prised of the tree trunk!

Paul.

Cotton Wedding Anniversary

We were married two years ago yesterday!

The adventure starts again for another year as we walk hand in hand into 2007!

Paul.

Mystery Of The Peacock Inn

My Auntie and Uncle had organised a Christmas meal for the family for last weekend, sadly Grandma was unable to attend as she's not feeling too cleaver at the moment. I think that might have been a blessing though as a simple meal tunred into the magical mystery tour of Chesterfield.

We drove throught the Cutthope countryside and rolled into the Peacock Inn car park. We were imediatley surprised to find that the only three cars in the car park were ours! It's got quite a good reputation this place and was booked solid through Christmas and New Year.

The place was utterly deserted with piles of unopened post behind one of the glass doors yet some of beer pump type stuff could be heard through a single open window in the toilets. We spent a good few minutes scratching heads, this had been booked back in November and now we had to find somewhere else, not easy a week before Christmas.

We went up hills, down hills, round hairpin bends, to the middle of nowhere and back again. Pulling up at every pub and resteraunt on route only find there was no room at the inn, spooky!

We did find somewhere eventualy and we had the promised Christmas meal, just a little bit later than we'd planned lol.

Paul.

Christmas Radio Times

We've been out tonight and picked up the Christmas edition of Radio Times as we always do.

Debbie's been having a flick through, reading the soap section, trying to find out what's going to happen to Pauline Fowler. Unfortunatley whoever has written the piece must have just finished reading a Dickens novel as it's full of references to Scrooge and ghosts but not much to do with Albert Square.

Chuffed, Debbie is not, the ghost of Christmas yet to come can see another TV guide being bought.... one written in chuffin English!

Paul.

Christmas Decorating

Well, it took the whole weekend to get there, but the Christmas decorations are all in place! It probably didn't help us both starting with the dreaded lurgie, we soldiered on though armed with cough mixture and lemsips lol. The tree looks fantastic, the picture doesn't really do it justice, it just seems to be a right pain to photograph properly.

It'll be more or less flat out here now until the day itself, it still amazes me how we managed to fit our wedding at Christmas time just under two years ago!

We've found that the expensive all singing all dancing cameras we got a little while ago are hopeless in the dark with the flash off, instead we used the mobile!

Paul.

Tickle Me Elmo

We've been having right laugh here with Tickle Me Elmo which Debbie bought yesterday!



This is the first video we've ever loaded, I think I might try holding the camera the right way up next time lmao!

Paul.

Sod's Law Strikes Again

Having risked life an limb last year putting up Chtristmas lights on our roof, I left them up there to save going through it all again.

There they've stayed all year round, until the day we want to switch them on again and the flippin' wind has blown them off!


Paul.

Finding The Right Tree

It's been a busy weekend once again, we were out almost all day on Saturday, shopping for clothes and one or two Christmas presents, one of them for us, a laptop!

Just like when we first got the BT Home Hub, connecting the laptop to it wasn't plain sailing, it took about 6 hours and two calls to BT support but we got there in the end. Now we can both surf at the same time, so there no more handbags at dawn when one of wants to use the computer lol.

Today we've been touring garden centres and diy shops looking for a new Christmas tree, we hardly saw anything we liked and would you believe it, we came home with exactly the same tree that we bought last time. It was the only white tree that looked the part, we wern't going for something we didn't like just to get something different. We'll be putting the tree up next weekend along with the other decorations.

We've also got some new lights for the tree outside, I think that's going to look fantastic when it's done. Before we can get started, I'll have to go rooting about in the loft for all the tree decorations and all the lights that we'll be spending a week untangeling lol.

We've just collapsed on the sofa and we're starting to relax, shame it's almost chuffin Monday again!

Paul.