where the journey takes me 2

December 2, 2025December 2, 2025

creating Christmas * day 2

The Joy of Giving

This is quite an appropriate time to talk about giving and it is done in memory of my dear friend K. It was her funeral yesterday and a lovely celebration of her life.

No-one could have had a better friend; even with the 20 year age gap we got on so well. What made K so special was that she was a true giver, she never expected anything from me and she would ring just to see how I was (ironic when she was so ill herself). She was always there with a warm welcome and ready to give you a cup of tea and piece of cake whenever you called. She had an equally wonderful way of saying goodbye as you left with a hug, a lot of thank yous for calling and then would wave you off from her steps outside her door, never going inside until you were out of sight. She made you feel special.

Knowing she was terminally ill and not much time left she had organised her funeral in advance and started to get her affairs in order to lessen the burden on her family afterwards. One of the most touching things, and I have a tear or two as I write this, was that the day before she became unresponsive she had made her daughter promise to get the Christmas present she had intended to get for me and it sits in the envelope beside me with a card.

Her daughter said it is a little thank you for the help we gave her since her partner died last year. DH and I gladly helped her. Her eldest son gave a fitting tribute and she had left little individual thank you messages to be read out acknowledging each of her children and her wider family for their love, help and support that they had given her throughout this difficult year. How lovely was that. She gave her love and appreciation to everyone, even at the very end of her life.

I am missing her so much….just the little things like when one of her favourite programs comes on the TV ( we both had a love of watching dear Robbie on his canal boat expeditions) or when I am in Sainsbury’s and I don’t bump into her halfway down an aisle all the way round the store, or like yesterday when we called at the local garden centre and I saw the poster for their Afternoon Tea which K and I thoroughly enjoyed for Christmas and her birthday.

So in memory of K I gave to the charity of her choice the Scottish Air Ambulance Endowment Fund. She was always grateful for their help when she needed it on holiday in Scotland and had to be flown to a hospital in an emergency.

As readers will know in past years I always try and make a few items for the craft stall at the coffee morning in our local church it is largely a gift of time on my part making something that will sell without spending a great deal on materials. This year I made these little bags of Christmas. The transfers for the candles, the bags, the chocolates and the oranges were quite inexpensive and all I had to buy, the rest of the bits and pieces including the candles I already had in my Christmas stash waiting to be made into something sellable.

It was a busy morning despite the wet weather and I was able to catch up with old friends over a cup of tea and a cake. They managed to raise £5,000 for the Crisis charity who will make sure as many homeless people as possible have a Christmas dinner on Christmas day.

Giving is so important and as K showed everyone by her actions, giving is not just about giving money. So although I give to my favourite charities at Christmas before I embark on my Christmas shopping I will take a leaf out of K’s book and give in other small ways too with a welcoming guesture like she would….a smile, a few words an acknowledgement to anyone that passes by.

Christmas is for giving…so like my friend I will give joyously from the heart. X

December 1, 2025December 1, 2025

creating Christmas * day 1

The Advent Calendar

Doesn’t everyone just love an Advent calendar.

No matter what shape or size, whether full of goodies or just little pictures, opening each individual door to discover a surprise each day is still as exciting now as when I had my very first one.

For all of my childhood the calendar would be of a Christmas or Nativity scene with a small picture behind the door, it wasn’t until sometime in the 80’s that I first bought one containing chocolate for my daughters and now they are very much the norm and this has escalated in the last few years and you are likely to find anything from a tea bag to gin.

In 2023 I bought these lovely Advent boxes from the Tiny Box Company and filled them with little presents for both my daughters. (This is not a paid recommendation)

This year I had ideas to make some little stitched chocolate parcels and hang them from a branch, but that was a bit adventurous for the time I had, and then whilst looking for some card the other day I came across one that I had started a few years ago and never finished.

It is just a basic homemade, very traditional style calendar with no sweets, just pictures; but such fun to make and easy to do with the children too.

Just collect together any pictures from old Christmas cards, tags or wrapping paper – even Christmas pictures from magazines are fine. I had a mixture of materials and where a picture was too big for the window I just copied and reduced it on the photocopier.

Then make a plan of 25 differently shaped rectangles on a sheet of A4 paper, leaving a margin around the outer edges. I used a piece of thin black card for the front of mine.

Cut out the 3 opening sides with a sharp knife. Fold back the door to the inside of the card on the uncut side. This prevents the doors springing open too soon on the finished calendar.

Using the same plan on a sheet of white A4 paper cut out suitable pictures for each window and stick in place on the sheet.

Cut some double sided tape to fit around the outer edges and one or two pieces in the middle (this will hold the two sheets firmly together). Place the right side of the picture sheet to the underside of the door sheet carefully aligning the edges and press firmly together.

Stamp a number onto each door one through 25 and add a bit of decoration. Mine is quite basic and a bit rushed. I always prefer to have the 25th day a picture of the Nativity and the largest window.

Behind today’s door No 1 is a cute festive penguin.

If you want to hang it on a wall then just punch a couple of holes at the top edge with a hole punch and thread through some cord or ribbon.

Whatever style of Advent you have for yourself I hope you will enjoy opening it. X

November 28, 2025November 30, 2025

creating Christmas * preparing…

Like many bloggers my Christmas preparations are in full swing and I find myself in mild panic.

Having started the initial preparations and made a note of all things Christmas in my notebook I am wondering if this will be the simple and stress free Christmas I am ~~planning~~, hoping for after all.

But I am raring to go now….the Christmas spirit is quite infectious – all around decorations and lights to mark the season are appearing daily in our village.

I love the time spent preparing, decorating and gift-giving but I must admit it seems to get harder to fulfill everything on the list that I want to do. The reward at the end of spending time with my friends and family and keeping up those traditions…new ones that we have made and old ones that we love to continue, is well worth the ‘busyness’ beforehand.

As part of the big pre-Christmas clean up I was determined to finish cleaning the oven this week, it had taken a while with a number of interruptions – but now it is sparkling clean – a good refresh before I begin baking the cake and making the nutroast. Cleaning out the freezer will be next…it is frost free but needs a bit of a wipe down and sort out.

Usually, throughout November as part of my plans I start stocking up on all those basic items like toilet rolls, washing up liquid, matches, foil and other household bits and pieces so I don’t have to worry about them just before Christmas when I have other things on my mind; and really I just want to focus on the absorbing the lovely array of Christmas goodies in the shops rather than the necessities.

My initial preparations for Christmas always begin with an inspiration notebook – clippings from magazines, ideas from pinterest and I keep a note of any local events we might go to.

I have booked the hairdresser, a visit to Santa (with grandchildren of course) and the pantomime, scheduled every known appointment, event, birthdays and inset days on my calendar and moved unecessary appointments into January and have made a note of the last posting dates.

I check in last year’s notebook for the page that tells me what didn’t work last year to avoid the same mistakes this year. I always try and persuade DH that leaving the outdoor lights until ‘later’ is not a good idea as often the weather can be quite bad, making it an unecessary battle with the elements whilst balancing on a pair of steps and putting up strings of lights in wet windy weather and then connecting it to the outdoor electric socket. I also make it a rule never to decorate or paint beyond October and not to make appointments, like the dentist, if it can wait until January. These kind of things eat up time during the last few weeks running up to Christmas.

Each year I like to plan to do something a little different. Something that is festive and allows us to take time out for a day or two. This year I booked the linocutting workshop (the results you will see in another post), and I am hoping to visit Mrs Gaskell’s house in Manchester where they are doing readings from Christmas poems and stories.

Once my cards are made or bought I keep a decorated Christmas box to put them in together with the list of people who I send them to and an updated address list and stamps. I can then write my cards in any free moments or whilst watching the TV. Updating the addresses is something I must do before I can print the labels. Finish making the cards is even more critical!

I like to assign a space for presents. If they end up scattered around the house I am likely to a) forget them or b) the grandchildren might happen upon them. I usually clear a shelf high up in my wardrobe where little eyes cannot see.

So that is me more or less prepared for getting through the next 24 days. I hope you will join me for my daily creating Christmas posts starting tomorrow. I will try to document my Christmas task of the day each day as I create our joyful Christmas – although I fully expect this might not go quite to plan!

Back very soon. X

November 24, 2025

dear diary ~ if it’s not one thing….

….it’s my mother, as DH and I often say when things happen.

And things are happening almost daily now with mum. She gets an idea in her head and can’t let go of it; we tell her the real version and within a few minutes she is telling us again of her rather skewed account.

Mum has not been eating much of her evening meals lately that my sister makes and puts in her freezer for her. The carer always ask her in the morning what she would like for tea and takes it out of the freezer to reheat at the 3 o’clock visit. She has been wasting quite a few meals recently having them heated up but then not eating them but opting to eat more cake and sandwiches instead and like last weekend asking for a Weetabix once the meal had been cooked which is quite wasteful. Needless to say my sister is not impressed after spending time cooking and providing meals for her. Anyway the long and short of this was a week of phone calls to me with mum accusing a carer of telling my sister she was eating Weetabix instead of her meal to cause trouble, which was not the case.

That was last week, and now she seems to have let go of that and developed a new, equally bizarre story this week with mum telling me she hopes she doesn’t have a Christmas like last year…it was the worst Christmas she has ever had! She sobs every time she tells me as she thinks, again mistakenly, that when she went to my sister’s on Christmas day last year (as she does every year), that my sister was ill in bed and her husband ‘had to do the best he could’ to feed and entertain her. She then reckons that no-one went to see her on Boxing day and she was left on her own. Well actually, my sister was not ill at all on Christmas day – it was a normal Christmas and we went up to see my mum on Boxing Day and spent the whole day with her until about 6pm when the carer came to help her to bed. So where she has got these ideas from I do not know.

There has been a noticeable decline in her mental state recently and for the last two weeks she has just begun to ring me at night after the last carer leaves at 7 o’clock after helping her to bed. She keeps ringing mainly to test her phone is working over and over like someone checking their door is locked. The most comical is when she rings me to help her over the phone to try and get a program on the TV. I tell her over and over the number of the channel and the time of the program until she finally brings it up on the telly (I can hear down the phone if she has got the correct one). Then everyday she will say to me I couldn’t get Vera on last night there must be something wrong with my TV! Sometimes you just lose the will….

It is hard to appreciate just how much her brain and thinking is so muddled now and full of absurd things, mixed with anxiety and paranoia. Dementia is a terrible affliction and difficult for those around her dealing with it, she often leaves us all exasperated.

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In between I have been busy though; both helping elder daughter with her epic move of the century and crafting for the Crisis coffee morning at church which helps to raise money for the homeless, we also spent an enjoyable morning at a lino cutting workshop I had booked for DH and I, carving out a lino cut design for my Christmas card this year.

It felt good to do something just for ourselves.

I had little time to produce something for the craft stall; I had been making some pomanders in the evening and using the transfers I got from The Works I decorated some small candles. So it was a start.

I also printed out and hand coloured the original snowdrop design I had made for the lino cutting session to make some new cards.

My idea was to assemble a few Christmassy items together and pop them into a box that could then be given as a gift to a friend. Each box to contain a homemade pomander, 2 small decorated candles, a pack of 4 handmade cards, 4 gift tags, 2 Christmas chocolates and a tiny Angel, (well everyone needs an Angel at Christmas) from a garland I happened to have.

Many long time readers might remember the little boxes I made for a previous Crisis event in 2023. If you want to see more of these click here.

….and I decided to carry on the theme again this time but not having any suitable boxes I used some rather lovely little handmade Indian paper bags I found in Homesense.