Our December

Not surprisingly, December was a busy month, both at home and work.

 

We celebrated our youngest girl successfully completing school with her Valedictory Dinner at a posh city venue.

December was all about the food, of course. This lovely spread at C's place on Christmas eve.

Everyone got a little carried away with the gift giving this year.

Christmas morning is still a joy, even with grown up kids.

Christmas day and Boxing day were spent catching up with family, eating, and laughing.

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 Best of all, after much secretive planning and scheming to ensure the maximum amount of surprise and romance, E's boyfriend proposed to her on New Years Eve, and she very happily and tearfully accepted. A perfect end to the year.

Sunday the 1st of Summer

 I arrived home from work on Thursday to find a beautifully decorated tree.
 E and Z had braved the spiders, (possible) rodents, and other creepy crawlies in our outside storage area, and succeeded in locating the Christmas tree and decorations.
Apparently it was a terrifying experience.
I was just pleased that I wasn't the one having to find everything and decorate the tree single-handed.

It's finally summer. And it's actually hot. Let's see how long it is before we all get sick of it!

....and breathe.

Thank goodness it's over for another year. I'd like to enjoy the festive season but working in retail tends to suck a lot of the joy out of it. So very, very exhausting. Most people are just way too stressed and often short tempered, including me. Admittedly, there are a few exceptions. Some of our wonderful regular customers presented us with chocolates and biscuits and other goodies which were much appreciated.
Christmas Day itself was just lovely. Our biggest Christmas miracle was that we managed to seat 16 people in our small dining area with relative ease (and three tables). We've catered for more than this on other occasions but never for  a sit-down meal. It was a happy day with lots of laughter and good food.
I worked on Boxing Day which I didn't mind even though it meant working for one day in the middle of a 10 day break. Our long-standing work rule is that if you do Boxing Day, you don't have to work Christmas Eve. No question as to which I'd rather do. December 24th working in a shop is definitely the nightmare before Christmas.
Anyway it's all over bar the never ending left-overs.
Here are a few moments from Christmas Day 2012 in our home.

One year ago today...

 

... I began this blog. To celebrate this fact, here are a crazy number of photos of our house in festive mode. Much arranging followed by rearranging has taken place over the past couple of days. Still not entirely satisfied about the placement of some items, but I'm not particularly fussed about that. There's fun to be had in further shuffling things around.

 

This past year has gone by amazingly fast and I'm happy to have a record of it on this blog, even though it wasn't an overly exciting twelve months.

Now it's time for a bit of a break. I will be working long hours over the next few weeks and will have little time for anything else. Hopefully I'll be back here eventually. In the meantime, I'll still be on Instagram (which is so addictive).

Anyway, on with the photos! 

Caitlyn, Eloise, Jack and Zoe's Christmas socks, made by my sister and presented to each child on their first Christmas.

Still filled with chocolates and lollies by Santa every year.

 

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