In which I have many Christmasses and one New Year

Happy New Year and Happy Christmas!

I took Christmas and, let's be honest, most of December too, off from blogging. I rarely touched the Internet whilst I was in the North so I missed sharing the joy of Christmas with my blog-reel back then. I would like to do it now: Happy Christmas!

I was having a wonderful time hanging out with family and doing all that traditional stuff. It was the first year that Andy and I celebrated Christmas day in the same place and so meant a lot to me. We didn't just have one present-opening-ceremony-day though: we managed to have four! Oh I know, it's not all about the presents before you spot my self-interest. I love the family and the food and the endless board games (even if trivia games make me feel sulky.) Why should I know the Australian Prime Minister in 1991? Or which bottle of beer has a 'laughing cavalier' on the bottle? I do hate games where the outcome is predetermined. Where one person has all the knowledge and no amount of skill or luck will let you overtake them. I do LOVE board games though and we did play many others and even got four more for Christmas.

Anyway, the point is I'm not going to pretend not to love getting presents either. I do. I am unabashadly materialistic and capitalist at times. I love ripping open Christmas paper and seeing what joy lies beneath. And I revel in the happiness of friends and family when you get them something perfect, that spot-on gift you were searching for.

So we had Christmas #1 at our house, before travelling northwards to my parents. As we were going to spend the 25th with my clan Andy's parents gave us presents in advance. Rather than carry them all the way to Yorkshire to open on the day and then bring back down -when our suitcases are going to be full anyway - we decided to make a thing of opening them the night before we travel north. Hence, Christmas number 1.

I wanted us to have a special romantic night opening up there presents and celebrating the last year. We wanted to buy a tree and loads of decorations and go the whole hog, but despite both having jobs at last we couldn't really afford to do that, and we ended up not even having time. So (as I work part time) I set the scene up for Andy coming home from work with just a few sprinkles of Christmas about the place.

I had two Playmobil Christmas set-ups. One in the bedroom: the modern Christmas family, shown above. One in the living room: the nativity, shown below. It's the first time I have put all these bits together like this.

 

We didn't have a tree in the end. So I put my little Playmobil one in the middle of our presents at our house...

...and shown again to scale

Bannan-splits for dessert. The plates are from a dinner set I got in the presents shown above. Put to use immediately!

I cooked us spaghetti carbonara and had red wine for me and root beer and cream soda for Andy. It was such a wonderful romantic evening. I think we played Magic: The Gathering after dinner and felt like real grown-ups.

Then we had Christmas Day itself: with all the carol-singing, royal-speech-watching, Doctor Who-squeeing, cake-baking, mulled-wine concocting, roast-turkey-dinner eating and Articulate-playinga person could wish for.

I then got to see my extended family for another massive Christmas-type dinner at a carvery (with some more presents).

Plus yesterday we went off to Andy's folk for New Years (and some more gifts) and being sorely beaten at Canasta.

I apologise if this particular blog entry feels more like a child's 'what I did on my holidays' school project than an entertaining read ("Then I did this, then I did that"). I didn't even touch on quite how much baking I did or go over our family traditions for the season. However I guess I just really wanted to put the words down and the pictures up because it really was a great time and I want to remember it.

And it is work again in the morning tomorrow, so it's all over now! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too and have a great year.

P.S. I shall probably do a Christmas haul post in a couple of days. There seemed to be a theme and I want to take some interesting pictures of some of it. I did get one thing that was on my list way back for my birthday and is pictured above. Gandalf and his fireworks. 

In which the camera is back

We moved locations to just down the road to hide from the neighbours... by standing somewhere more public. Not the best logic!

After my previous post which now feels a very long time ago when I apologised for not blogging due to playing Final Fantasy X-2 in all my spare time the trend has very much continued. Only I could have blogged these last few days in the times I wasn't on the PS2, but I lost my camera cord for uploading photos. I looked everywhere for it, going pretty mad teating the house down looking for it. Naturally it actually was in the cable box which I had gone through at the start. Fail.
Anyway I am here now! I've included some random photos from recent life events along with my outfit post. See the little captions for explanation of the odd images.

I haven't worn the dress in these photos for about a year until now because it needed hand washing. Yep. That's how lazy I am. Hand washed clothes just NEVER get done. I didn't even hand wash this! I just put it in the main wash accidentally and nothing bad seemed to happen so I'm going to do it again. Maybe now I'll actually wear the dress. Which would be nice as it is so soft and comfortable.
Also, when I was wearing this dress and taking photos in our back yard our neighbour stuck her head out her window and told us she was now convinced we were crazy for standing around in the cold without sleeves. Yay, *insert super self-consciousness here*. I always feel a little embarassed taking photos, but I at least have my fiance as a kind of shame shield. With two people doing something together it's not quite so odd is it? How do all of you who take photos with a tripod and a clicker cope when people stare at you?  Or are you just so confident that it isnt an issue? Or do you live somewhere where people are too polite to stare?

This is from a visit to my sister's house. We are rather alike in our love of children's toys so we got out all her Lego people and mixed them up into strange new concoctions. The genie surgeon had to be the best though! Look how cool she is. Just what you want on an adventure.

We then tried to make a J-pop band who you can see in the back. I particularly liked swapping Einstein and Pink's hair round. Now they both look like punk rockers! Sorry for the awful light in these photos. I wasn't really trying here, concentrating more on the Lego than the photos.

My latest figure in the minifigure collection! I totally want to build a Lego sumo ring now and get two of them.

This was at Hyper-Japan. A set of four statues depicting characters from one of my favourite computer games  of all. Chrono Trigger. We did not buy them though.

Sorry for the serious face here. I guess I was a bit cold.

In which I am a windswept giant

So I haven't blogged yet in December! I havent event checked the blogs I usually read or done anything of the sort and the whole blogging world has just slipped away from me these last two weeks. Sorry blogs! I am going to go on a blogging-binge this afternoon catching up on what has been happening  everywhere. Basically I have been busy at work, and visiting my sister -but probably the biggest reason is I have two new computer games! Heh. Andy and I used to play Kingdom Hearts all the time at university. It was one of the things that our relationship solidified around. We used to play it after going clubbing. Sitting up from one till four in the morning playing both Kingdom Hearts and then it's sequel. But it wasn't our game. And when the housemate who owned them moved out so did the games. Then last weekend I went to HyperJapan. It's a massive festival of all things Japanese -yes I went in Cosplay. We ate new Japanese food, bought lots of presents and then found a stall selling classic computer games. All the ones we hadn't seen in ages. So now we're playing a join KH game again and I'm also playing Final Fantasy X-2. I don't know if you are into Final Fantasy but I was not impressed with it after playing X. It was a linear game with nothing fun about it. But the sequel is awesome! It is playing as three women, all of whom kick-ass, it allows you lots of choices and interesting interactions. Even my beloved Kingdom Hearts is very male-centric even with a cringe-worthy Rescue-the-Disney-Princesses sub-plot (yuck) so FFX-2 is winning on not feeling sexist at al. To be honest it's very hard for me not to just get up and switch it on after writing all this!

Anyway. Now you know why I've been away!

In the mean-time I have got some outfit photos from ages ago that I just uploaded. I don't know what happened with the perspective in these pictures but in loads of them I look either like some kind of giant marching past the model chalets, or as though Andy and I just used a blue screen and decided to photoshop me into a holiday area to make it look like we went away...

I love the pattern on this new dress. It's a little bit french somehow and the bits of orange go well with Autumnal clothes. (Although now there is snow on the ground I guess my colour palette has to change a little too).

Wheelbarrow necklace made by me.

Red shows and frilly socks.

I am a GIANT. I swear this picture looks so unreal!

In which it is about time I did a Lego update

I used to predominantly post about Playmobil when I was doing my toy posts, but in the last year I have given over a great deal of my love to Lego. Despite anger about the sexism in their marketing, or the fact that Playmobil is the stuff I have boxes and boxes of, the little single minifigure sets have been something great to grab on a trip into town and so I have slowly built up a little collection of them. I have done these posts many times before when I've got some new figures so I've got some photos of the latest few guys and the full collection!

The little bagpiper is up there in my favourites. It is probably the eyebrows that do it for me.

Snowboarding guy. Wins because I used to do snowboarding at uni.

Cause of it being Thanksgiving time I thought I would honour by American friends by putting the Statue of Liberty at the front. She does look rather stern. :)

I always think of this one as being Pink. I love Pink's stuff no matter how pop-y it may be compared to the rest of my music collection. She is awesome.

Aah! Looks like cave man is sneaking up on Susan.

Dancing Lego guys!

Andy bought me this on his way home from work the other day. Aren't the Lego pom poms incredible? I need to do a Lego Heroes scene now! ("save the cheerleader, save the world.")

And it's Hamlet!

I've also bought a couple of proper Lego sets recently! Despite thinking I have lots of Lego, what I have are lots of figures and LOTs of Lego board games. We have Creationary, Hogwarts, Pyramid, Pirate Ship and two different Heroica games. All board games made of Lego. But the Monster Fighter series, where I got the first set for my birthday won me over. I love comic books so this swamp figure set was just screaming for me to buy it! Look at the poor swamp thing, being attacked by the nasty bully. What did he ever do? Just living peacefully in his swamp! So Ann Lee comes to the rescue! I had to have my favourite figures team up against the bad guys. Yes, the story is humans v monsters but I think it is obvious that the swamp catcher guy is just a prat with some guns. Ann Lee now rides a skeletal horse and is just the best.

In which there is an overwhelming weekend and peppermint

This weekend has been one that has been just that little bit stressful. There were definitely good times -watching Mean Girls and drinking wine as well as eating a ridiculous amount chocolate fingers over the two days. However I've been also doing a bunch of stuff for work AND wedding things. I can't believe how confusing wedding planning can be. We spent hours and hours discussing things to go on our invites and making big decisions like shall we get married at 2.00 or 2.30! I enjoyed all the design part of the invites but deciding on wording or which hotels to reccommend isn't fun at all. I cannot wait to get married but sometimes it is overwhelming how many different things need to be finalised! In the meantime I went out and bought some new tights. I got a mustard yellow chunky knit pair and these gorgeous peppermint tights. They look paler in this light but indoors they look good enough to eat. I totally have outfit photos still to go up from my holiday still but I want to share this outfit that I wore today first. I'm really proud of all the co-ordinating colours going on here.

This outfit is almost camoflage. Perhaps it would work if I was hiding in the Scottish hills amongst some heather.

The oldest shoes I own. Literally had them for eight years! Doc Martens are the best.

My necklace has a flame and a beret on it. I made it at a Christian craft workshop I ran several years ago and actually has quite deep personal significance, but it does look a little odd to outside eyes.

Woo! Batwing top: I love you so much