On my day off, I did spend a few hours dollshousing and I glued the ceiling onto the upper hallway of the Japanese house and constructed the handrail for the balcony. When I stood the almost-completed porch in place on the house though, I realised it's a completely different colour than the rest of the house. I obviously didn't stir the wood stain enough because everything I stained recently has come out a light brown, whereas the rest of the house is dark oak. I'm going to try re-staining some of the pieces on the new porch to help it blend in more but I think I already sealed some of the timbers with matt varnish, oops.
Meanwhile the decorations are now all up and the house looks reasonably nice. I think I've struck more of a balance this year between my own tendency to over decorate, and the quiet elegance I admire in christmas magazines. Both trees look nice, and I used some real holly we trimmed off our holly tree when we were putting up the trellis to decorate some ledges and windowsills. The cleaning is still a work in progress and the big blitz will be this coming weekend as the in-laws arrive on Monday.
Meanwhile this week was my office christmas lunch with my team. This year we were in a gorgeous old half-timbered house called Wygston's House, one of the oldest houses still standing in Leicester, dating from 1490. We had to pay for our own lunch but the food was very nice and my manager did buy us a round of drinks. Definitely hugely better than the last time I went to the team lunch which was in a crowded cramped place with sticky tables. This year felt very christmassy and elegant.
And then this weekend we enjoyed a family Christmas treat with a weekend break in Oxford, our favourite city. DS rode in with us then went off to join his girlfriend while we spent the day ambling from cafe to cafe, with intermittent christmas shopping in the Covered Market, at the Christmas market and visits to bookstores. All very relaxing apart from the driving rain and gusting winds which caused me to break not one but two umbrellas as they both blew inside out multiple times. We met back up with DS and girlfriend and treated them to supper at a Chinese. They went off again and we stopped in at a lovely quiet pub called The Three Goat's Heads, for cocktails and in my case a spot of knitting on my christmas sock. We stayed overnight very centrally at historic Oriel College, booked through University Rooms, who hire out college rooms on a bed and breakfast basis out of term time. We had breakfast this morning in the college's impressive hall with a hammerbeam ceiling and a gorgeous christmas tree in the bay window. As you can see from the sun coming in the windows, it's a much nicer day today thankfully.
After breakfast we strolled along the misty Christchurch Meadows and watched some thatchers at work putting a new thatched roof on some buildings near Christchurch college. After more tea in yet another cafe, it was along to the newly revamped Westgate shopping mall which now looks like something worthy of London, and a bit more christmas shopping. A sushi lunch where DS joined us and it was back home we went, all feeling very full and very relaxed. The cat was glad to see us as of course she had long since eaten the extra food we had left out for her yesterday.
I hope your christmas prep is well in hand and that you are getting some time to relax as well!
1 comment:
I think Christmas this year is going to be about the meal and not much else. Sounds like you had a nice night away.
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