Happy New Year to you! 2024

Sending you warm wishes for a happy New Year filled with love and joy. May your heart be light, your days be bright and your year be just right.

Have the happiest New Year!

Hugs, Rose xxx

I wish you a Merry Christmas

 

I will catch up with you soon.

Hugs, Rose x 

I have been making Christmas decorations

 

I have spent the past few weeks busily enjoying myself getting ready for Christmas. The Christmas presents are all bought and wrapped, and I have since been focusing on the Christmas Eve lunch table setting.

Instead of Christmas crackers, this year I wanted to make something myself as a gift to our guests. So, after many hours searching on Pinterest, I found free templates of little Christmas box houses and paper Christmas trees, designed by Gunnor Karita from the Wings of Whimsy blog.

I downloaded the templates, scaled them, and printed them onto glossy photo paper. They were easy to cut out, fold and glue together.

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I filled each little Christmas house box with Hershey's kisses. I found Christmas mint truffle ones that are wrapped in a cute snowflake foil. Then I placed one box on top of each folded napkin.

I also printed off some Santa jokes to put inside each box.

The little Christmas boxes can be hung on the Christmas tree too as shown in my first photo.

For the centre of the table, I made a little village of paper gingerbread houses and fir trees.

I treated myself to a set of new handmade placemats which are made out of white-washed rattan. Plus, I bought a white cotton tablecloth and napkins which have a hemstitched border. They were all in the pre-Christmas sales and the napkins worked out to be free once all the discounts were applied!

The pre-Christmas lunch menu is written and all I need to do now is wash the plates and cutlery, which were in storage since we moved house. Then I have a bit of last-minute grocery shopping to do for fresh vegetables and a few odds and ends. 

I ordered the non-perishables online from the supermarket and they have already been delivered. And I am expecting a selection of cheeses to be delivered on Friday.

This is the most organised and relaxed I have been before Christmas. I have been enjoying watching Christmas-themed vlogs on YouTube, plus reading the December edition of The Simple Things magazine on my iPad via our library. I really enjoy reading that magazine.

I hope that you are enjoying the days leading up to Christmas too!

Hugs, Rose x

It's the first day of Summer today!

Happy first day of Summer! 

December the 1st is the first day of Summer in New Zealand. It has been a lovely warm 24 degrees C today, slightly overcast and no wind. A perfect day to start putting the Christmas tree up, decorating the house and opening door number one of my advent calendar.

I walked around the garden, barefoot, this afternoon, with Otto following me. He is such a curious cat, watching what I am doing all the time, apart from when he is running up the trees or climbing onto the roof of the house! 

In the garden I found a few ripe boysenberries and raspberries, which tasted delicious, lovely and juicy and full of flavour. The small passionfruit vine is flowering and there is one fruit forming already.

The Feijoa (pineapple guava) is full of red flowers, but I didn't see any Tui birds nearby to pollinate them. Hopefully the Tuis will find them so we can enjoy feijoas this year.

The Pohutukawa tree overhanging our fence from next door, is absolutely full of flower buds. It's going to look spectacular when the red flowers are open. Nice and Christmassy.

I hope that you are enjoying the first day of advent too.

Do you follow any traditions for December the first?

Hugs, Rose x