December update in Diary

I didn't write for the entire month of December and I've probably forgotten a lot of stuff that went on, so here's what I can remember.

On 6th December me and Jay took a day trip to London because we booked cheap train tickets in advance, I think we paid about £15 for a return; bargain! The plan was to get Christmas shopping but I only ended up buying two presents and they were things I could have bought anywhere. I didn't mind, though, I enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere, looking in the Christmas windows of the big department stores and wandering around Camden Lock market.

These are some of the many many windows of Selfridge's, which was the first department store in the world and the subject of a popular TV drama.



A giant snow globe with a replica of the shop inside it.

John Lewis windows, which cleverly used items from the shop to create animals. Here is a bear made out of leather cushions etc.



Reindeer made out of Dyson vacuum cleaners.


And my favourite, turkeys made out of towels!


Here is the Christmas tree at Covent Garden with an enormous plant pot.


There are loads of lifesize horse statues at Camden Lock market as that's where the stables used to be. A lot of the market stalls are based inside the stables, which they've kept intact. It's really interesting :o)


This one's a bit scary...


Back in Birmingham, I went to check out the Bullring bull's Christmas outfit. He wears something different every year, last year it was a festive onesie!

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On 20th December we had our Christmas raffle at work. It's the third year I've entered it and I've never won anything before, despite there being millions of prizes. Well this year I made up for it and I only went and won a Kindle Fire HDX! I'm so excited! I've already got a Kindle Fire but this is the next model up with better screen, better sound, longer battery life, better video quality, bigger memory. Wooooo!

So I'm selling my old Kindle on eBay. I should get about £90-£100 for it. I'm also selling my pole dancing pole as I haven't used it for a couple of years so I'm hoping to get about £80 for that. I got £150 cash as Christmas presents so, adding all that together, I'll have enough for a new laptop! This one is five years old now. I've almost filled the memory, it has absolutely no battery power and it's the second battery I've had, there are loads of popups and constant updates and it can sometimes take up to 15minutes to come on. So it's about time I got a new one, especially if I'm going to be using it for running my business when that gets up and running.

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Me and Jay had our own Christmas on 21st December as I went up to Cumbria for real Christmas. We had dinner, gifts and Christmas films. He got me a big Moulin Rouge canvas to hang on the wall (SQUEE!) as well as a pretty silver bracelet with amethysts and a couple of smaller gifts; books etc.

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22nd December I drove up to Cumbria. I couldn't believe how quiet the roads were! It's 195 miles and normally takes me about four hours, one time it took over five because of the terrible traffic. But this time I did the entire journey in three hours, it was amazing! I had a lovely four days staying with my parents, I saw my sister and her family most days and Christmas day we all went to my grandparents house, as is tradition, and there were thirty people there at one point. They only have a small two-up-two-up. It's great fun when everyone's crammed in, talking and laughing :o)

This is a photo of my mam and dad's house on Christmas day. L-R is my sister Sonja, her 7 year old daughter Eleanor, her 11 year old Isabel, her boyfriend John (father of the three children), my dad in his gold crown, the legs of 18 year old Robert and Meg the 15 year old border collie in the middle.


And this is the genuine face of Eleanor when she opened the camera my mam and dad bought for her. I think she liked it!



She then proceeded to take about 100,000 photos of every single thing she saw for the rest of the day.

These are the icing decorations I made for mam's Christmas cake, the Snowman and the Snowdog.

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Yesterday was obviously New Year's Eve. Me and Jay went over to Mike and Mini's house for a quiet night seeing in the new year. Trying to get a taxi was impossible. Jay was ringing up and the earliest we could get one for was 3:15am! So we decided to walk 2 miles to the next town along and get one from there, but it was still 3:30am when we got to bed. I'm too old for that sort of thing now, especially as I had to be up this morning to walk Roxy.

Tomorrow is my dad's birthday and I've ordered him a tiny camera for putting in his bird box. It connects to the TV and you can watch and listen to them nesting, laying eggs, feeding the babies and seeing the babies grow up. I think it's something he'll really like :o)

Tomorrow and Friday I have my first photography job for ages. Jay's workplace is having a conference and they want exciting photos taking of people giving thrilling lectures about screws and circular saws. Lol, well I'm getting paid for it and I get a free dinner to boot, woot woot :o)

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions but I'm going to see if I can stay dry in January. I don't normally drink at home anyway and we don't have any plans for going out at the moment so hopefully it shouldn't be too difficult. I'm also going to see if I can go veggie at some point in 2014 but I'm not making myself any promises. It's hard when Jay's a staunch carnivore and while bacon exists...

Now I'm all caught up all that remains is to wish you all a happy new year and prosperous 2014 :o)