* Rocking around the Christmas Tree * - It's the 2018 Christmas Chatter Thread

04624181

Happy New Year everyone!!

We had a lovely Christmas and we have spent some lovely time together as a family.

Operation sell the house is on! husband is working like a trojan on wallpapering feature walls, uncovering varnished, wallpapering, painting. we aim to have it on the market in next 2 weeks!.
MRI is this week, pain has notched up a gear so I am on full dosage.
We went out to inlaws for a lovely meal yesterday afternoon aiming to be back for around 8pm. we got in at 2.30am! First NYE out in over 10 years. All the kids played lovely, the adults chatted and played games and we had an amazing time and have vowed to make it an annual thing!
Today hubby is finishing the carpet removal where we have found varnished floorboards. they look amazing, they are in a bedroom but we have bough a lovely thick rug to go at the foot of the bed.

Not setting resolutions but just want us to be healthy. Eat healthier, go walking, less tv etc.

Thank you all for the pleasure of spending 2017 with you all.
I have enough wrapping paper to last me for next year. Christmas tree came down on Saturday as we have gifted it to somebody else as it wasnt big enough for us. Have just saved my special ornaments and regifted everything else. Will keep an eye on the sales but God willing we will be in a new home for Christmas 2018! so so excited!!!

mrs-moneypenny

Thank you for the new thread, I will try and join in more.

Tree will come down sometime this week and my first crafting item will be to crossstitch a stocking for next Christmas. A new grandchild is due very soon so they will need a first Christmas stocking.

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and new year

LMG1305

Happy New Year everybody! I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year. I was so happy to see this thread already set up when I logged on today

Thank you 3forholidays for setting up the thread again. I do look forward to a new year thread.

I have made a start on my 2018 Christmas shopping already. I ordered 2 boxes of crackers from Debenhams in the sale. They were £7 each, down from £25 each. I also ordered a Christmas cushion in the sale for my stepmum & candles from The White Company for my sisters. I also bought some clothes in the Topshop & River Island sales for my DD1, but they are for her birthday which is in a few months.

I think I have ordered other stuff too, but I can't remember now off the top of my head.

Did anybody get anything in the Boots sale? I was quite disappointed with it this year. I did have a look but thought there wasn't really anything I was interested in. What did annoy me is the Soap & Glory box set that was £30 down from £60, but I know that it was £30 the week before Christmas because I was actually in the store one day that week & remember hearing 2 women talking about it at the till. The only things I would have bought were Yankee candles but I was too late & they were all sold out.

04624181 - good luck with the house sale. Funnily enough we have been talking about moving for over a year now, but have always said we have to get certain rooms decorated beforehand, so I am making it my mission this year to have a big clearout & get the rooms finished because we've now given ourselves a 2 year maximum deadline to be moving on. I started yesterday by clearing out some junk that has been cluttering up the storage baskets in my bedroom & I have also sorted out the glasses in our kitchen & offered them to my sister. We have so many glasses so they take up a lot of room, but we had a set of 8 wine glasses & a set of 8 champagne glasses that over the years have dwindled down to 6 of each because of breakages, but because my table is an 8 seater I don't get much use out of them, so I'm getting rid of them now.

I've not read through the whole thread yet so will catch up with everybody & reply again, but just wanted to say Happy New Year to you all & let you know I'm still here & still loving Christmas

x

lazysheep

Hope everyone had a good New Year, whether that was going out or staying in

I'm back to work tomorrow so the tree came down last night and all the decorations are packed away but it was too late to move all the furniture back and hoover the bits of tree and glitter that came off so that's a job for today at some point.

Next job is to clear out the 'spare room' which has become more like a junk yard as there is stuff all over the floor and dispose to bins/charity shop as applicable..

nic2075

The decorations are down so Christmas :xmastree: is finally over. The place is so bare. But lovely and clean looking.
I always find January very depressing. Ive no aim. Feel like I've just spent the last few months with Christmas in mind.
This is when I start panicking about where my life is going. I look at going back to college to retrain. But never do as I can't afford to stop working and never see anything for evenings. Ive sat looking for better jobs. But I do enjoy the job I'm in. But there aren't any promoted posts about.
I still have a few more days off to enjoy. As I said in a recent post, I have some big decisions to make, which are playing on my mind.
Life is never easy for long is it?

StokieBecks

Decs are down here too - was ready for them to come down but looks so empty without them now.

Hope everyone is ok. I am tired today was up at half five this morning and there was an owl outside our house somewhere last night who was calling all night. Have heard it occasionally before but last night it was like it never stopped. Nice to have the wildlife but last night something must have disturbed it

Mischiefmanaged

Happy New Year Everyone.!!!

Had a lovely few days. NYE with family round my sisters and NYD with the same family. Off work with the kids for the rest of the week. Going town so the kids can spend their money and to see if there are any bargains ( I seriously doubt it ).

Spent some of our Christmas money on new cases for our holiday later in the year. I always say I'm going to buy some and then leave it to near the holiday and I've never got enough spare cash so bit the bullet and ordered 2 large cases from Matalan. Also going to de Christmas the house tomorrow and do a proper clean.

kerri_gt

Decs are down here and packed away in the loft. Not sure what happened with my packing but for some reason I couldn't fit one of the decs back into the boxes, however my DM also bought us a wreath this year which wouldn't have fitted in without crushing it so they've just been popped in another box.
Have a few Xmas bits in a bag for charity but figure they prob won't want those until later in the year so they are also up in the loft too. Few other bits went in the bin, had offered on freecycle and no one seemed interested.
We've got tons of bits from different hampers too that OH got given at work so I've sorted those, set some bits aside for DM, and some for the local food bank (had already dropped in an Xmas pud before Christmas)
Everything now looking tidy and ship shape...sort of, though I reckon I'll still be hoovering up glitter come June.

msgigglewick

Decs are mostly down here too (all apart from the front window vinyls) house suddenly looks bare and big for 5 mins lol

I got a few things in the boots sale (3 items for me for now lol, dh got a couple for him too.. then i got my stepdads xmas pressie too) Actually got loads more in superdrug sale on boxing day.. always seemed to miss their sale so timed it right this year..and it was way cheaper than boots ever go too. Our tescos i usually get lots of the kiddies smellies sets but they never actually had any before xmas so won't be getting those this year.

My younger girls aren't back to school until next week.. so we're going to spend the week just playing.. todays been lovely and relaxed.

Not really got any plans for this year yet.

LMG1305

I haven't taken all of my decs down yet. I have made a start, but some of it has to be wrapped carefully & we also have the trees to take down, so I am going to get it all done on Friday evening now. My OH & daughters are still off at the moment anyway, so I thought it would be nice for them to still have the Christmassy feel for a little bit longer. However, tonight I am planning to take down the tree in the conservatory. It's the easiest one to do because the decorations on it are nothing special, so can be put into a bag without the worry of them breaking in the attic.

I've decided that this year I am going to try & be more productive in the evenings. I find that outside of the 'normal' stuff, like work, school runs, mealtimes, washing etc I have become quite lazy & tend to spend my evenings in front of the TV or laptop. So my plan is that each day I will set aside an hour (3 hours per day on the weekend) to do something productive outside of the normal routine. For example, I have just enrolled on the next module of my Open University course, so I will have to study for that each week. Also yesterday evening instead of watching TV all night, I spent just over an hour sorting out some storage baskets in my spare room & also my summer clothes that were just in my wardrobe & I put them in one of those vacuum pack bags, which I will now put in the attic until the weather starts to warm up again. I will also use these productive hours to do things like decluttering drawers, cupboards & any other storage units in our house, making homemade gifts for Christmas & birthdays, going for more walks and reading more. I actually started doing this on Monday & have written down the last 2 days what I have done, so hopefully if I keep doing this, when I'm lacking motivation I can read through what I've done so far & it will help me to get off my butt & keep going!

I went to Asda in my lunch break yesterday & got a few things in the sale. I got wrapping paper for 50p a roll, lovely Christmas gift bags for 35p each & bought a new set of Tefal saucepans for £30 instead of £45. We've been needing new ones for ages but I always begrudge paying so much money for pans, so I was quite pleased with myself when I bought those yesterday.

Stokie - I am also very tired today, but not because of an owl. I actually love owls but I don't think I'd love them quite as much if I had one outside my bedroom window keeping me awake! I'm tired because I'm still trying to get back into a normal routine again after Christmas. We had so many late nights so I'm finding it difficult now to go to bed at a reasonable time, to get enough sleep for work in the mornings. I think I eventually got to sleep at 1am, but had to be up at 7am so not feeling particularly wonderful today. Never mind, I'm sure it will soon pass

Lazysheep - my spare room is exactly the same. I have a big sort out occastionally & actually manage to find the floor, then within a few weeks it's back to being a junk room. It's very irritating! This is one of the things I will tackle with my 'productive hours' this year. We have way too much stuff around our house anyway, so definitely need to start getting rid of things, which is my major plan this year.