Post Post

In my journal nothing much was happening. Until, that is, the Christmas post started to arrive, with its exciting stamps and postmarks. I scraped some ink onto pages and started to stick in all the things that took my fancy. After the day itself I added some of the tags and ribbon too. This mosaic has the lovely Jessie, on the envelope of the card from Linda and Becky in Greece. Today's post has a recycled princess and the pea bed for her. There are also some Dutch stamps from my friend Sarah who we are off to visit on Saturday.

Pretty and religious stamps-and helpful information in the postmark.

A lovely Canadian stamp from Kat.

A page trying out a tree stamp (of the other kind!) from Clare.

A sticky label from a delicious lunch in Leon in Bluewater.

A handmade tag from Cleo.

Doing this is also good for combating my hoarding instincts-stick in the pretty stuff and recycle the rest-every little helps!

Before I go, have you seen Retronaut? I have subscribed to it, so get at least one fascinating email a day. It is such a great site.
Also this is very sweet. The geese think the microlight man is their mother!

Through the Looking Perspex

Do you remember when I cut through the hedge of thorns, to let the children see what was going on, on the other side of the big blue fence? Then the builders piled a big pile of dirt in front of the view I had created? Well, the next thing they did was to build another big blue fence, running all the way along between what is left of Forest School, and the building site, thus cutting off the view again. But, after polite requests, one of the builders came to cut us two windows. He came to my carpet in the morning, and asked for an 'average child' to measure. E. obliged. I did ask if there would be a window for an 'average adult' but was told I would have to crouch down! Anyway, it is great that we can now see. This week things have moved on, and a drill for a giant has arrived, and is making its way around, drilling big holes.

As it is December 1st, it was an appropriate day to decorate the tree which was delivered to Nursery yesterday. Dion did it this afternoon, with the help of the children of course, and they managed to make it look very Victorian.

Just before I left tonight, I looked a little closer at the tree and was amused to see the poor fairy clinging on in a most undignified manner! I shall rescue her tomorrow.

Door 4, Tree and how to feel good...

I used gouache to paint my door yesterday, and used the rest to paint a couple of page's backgrounds. It dries really matte-I like the effect, and that you can write on it quite easily. This page has a few things that made me happy yesterday. Today, I would add using free photoshop brushes-namely sparkles and pixie dust. I am afraid I have pixie dusted everything!

This is our tiny tree-it is a living tree and I am going to plant it in Forest School after Christmas. In front of it is a Christmouse. I just could not face getting out all the packed away decorations-especially as hardly any of them would fit on this tree. So I made button garlands to hang on it. I stood some lights behind it and voila!-tiny tree done!

The tree is small enough to fit into a bag-so easy!

Cassie has a talent for finding meaningful carrrier bags. Here she is reminding me that to feel good you need lots of sleep. She made herself a little nest in amongst the rubbish.

A Few Days

A few photos from the last few days-Christmas has come and gone again! This is Bertie, one of my Mum's cats (Bert and Ernie after the muppets) He and I had a battle for the chair he is on and he mainly won. He stares up into your eyes with a look of love.

Our Christmas day game. It is called 'Connect' and we have had it since we were children. It is a simple but strangely fun game where all you have to do is make connections with the underground map-like pieces. Usually everyone plays scrabble except me as I don't really like it(and am not very good at it!) but this year we played connect and then junior trivial pursuit-from the eighties-so very dated current affairs and sports.

On Boxing day we went to Antony's and had a walk into town which was really busy. This is an unusual lamp shade in his house-one of his drawings. I did a few doodly face drawings and then remembered this lamp and made them into candle shades. I have ordered some of those led tealights for a safe option though!

Antony is still in the process of clearing out the stuff from his house and I have relieved him of quite a lot of it. This tray was one I missed on our last visit-it is really 70s Christmassy I think. The counters were being thrown out at school and I rescued them.

On Sunday we went to my Dad's for lunch.

This is the view from the back of his house. I love the stark tree against the blue cloudy sky. This is Oskar. He belonged to the old man that Joan, Dad's wife, cared for for a long time. When he died, Joan and Dad adopted Oskar. He is a sweetie!

A deliciously scented hyacinth. I love these flowers.