HAPPY NEW YEAR

Well another year has screamed past, can't say I am not happy to see the back of it! Not much sewing has taken place in my neck of the woods. Santa coughed up a new lens for my camera so in between eating, which seems to be one of the major past times of Christmas, I have been taking pictures of anything that takes my fancy.

I made all the nieces a glitzy letter and a wallet and coin purse.

The turkey was carefully slathered in butter and given a protective coating of bacon before it hit the Weber. (Sorry I forgot to take a photo of the finished bird) There was enough to supply lunch and dinner on Boxing Day and sandwiches for the cricket for the men of the house the following day. After that we all lost interest and cut the rest up as care packages for the two felines to enjoy for a while yet.
The pudding turned out a treat cooked and then reheated in the crockpot. It was then topped with my mothers secret sauce. It contains a couple of generous dollops of brandy. Even those who don't do the pudding, do the sauce! I also made a trifle and a yule log.
There were way too many of these consumed...

As the males in house left me to my own devices to attend day two of the cricket, I spent a good deal of the day messing with the camera. How much fun can a girl have with a punnet of red currants and a bottle of lemonade.

I ended up with about 160 pictures, not including the ones that were really bad. I think I have fiddled with every button and setting, but I am still as confused at the end of the day. But I do so love the digital SLR camera's.

I have made some attempts at capturing some bugs up close. The bees were being very tolerant and the fly thing (I just take pictures and hope they don't end up in my hair never mind what the critters are called) almost seemed happy to pose - even the spider made an effort.


Then I moved on to the florals.

New Year's Eve was a very quiet night. The weather was pretty ordinary with wind, rain and thunder and lightening. In between the thunder and fireworks, many pets were under considerable stress - Harvey spent a fair proportion of the evening under the recliner - this is not the safest spot, and it took both my husband and son to retrieve him - one to tip the chair up and one to fish the cat out.

We did enjoy dinner of home made fish and chips. Well more like salmon steaks and homemade potato wedges.

I followed this up the next night with a version of Brick Chicken. The other half and I were watching an episode of Martha Stewart and got so inspired we gave it a go. It was very successful. As I don't have any bricks laying around I used my big heavy cast iron pot. It well and truly did the trick.
Hopefully now that Christmas is over with I can get back into sewing and embroidering to my hearts content. There has been a definite lack of enthusiasm on my behalf, my "room" needs a good going over, I have beads to pick up off the carpet after Norman sent a container flying, on one of his visits and my computer desk is swamped with pieces of paper filled with "inspirational" thingy's.


Hope you all have a great New Year. Bye for now - Sue