ABC Wednesday - T

T is for:

The turrets and towers of Dunster Castle, set on a tor amongst the trees. Dunster is a little town near Minehead in Somerset. There has been a castle there for more than one thousand years. You can read more about it here.



and some tiled roof tops




Thanks go to Mrs Denise Nesbitt and her team who host ABC Wednesday. For more looks at this week's letter, please click here.

Where does the time go?

Well, so much for being determined to a post each day through November. I began well enough but slid into lethargy last week and now, here we are, the very last day! Where does the time go?

It wasn't actually lethargy - I have been very busy and consequently very tired and I'm afraid blogging is the first thing to go whenever that is the case.

I had a telephone call late last Tuesday afternoon asking if I could take my mother to the hospital the following morning for a blood transfusion. We needed to be there for 9 am and as she had to have 2 units of blood, would be there most of the day. Of course that meant a double journey and also re-arrangement of plans already made. No problem as Mum is priority at the moment. The journey takes 35 minutes but I had to allow for morning traffic and the fact that Mum is slow, so we left home at 8 am. When I got Mum back home there was a letter waiting for her to say that she is to go into hospital for her operation on 14th December and will be in for about 5 days. So at least we know when and I now know that I have (now) 2 weeks to prepare for Christmas.

So, I have made lists, bought cards and written most of them - they will be posted later this week and made a start on the gift buying. I have made 4 Christmas cakes - one for a charity stall, one for us and the other 2 are gifts. Yesterday I put the almond paste on each of them and will decorate them over the coming 2 weeks.

Funnily enough, I think I will be more organised this year as I have found in other years, when my time has been limited for Christmas preparations (for various reasons), that most things have gone swimmingly!

Finally, an apology to those of you who aren't so organised - I'm not bragging - honestly!


PS - I just checked and I did 20 posts out of a possible 30 so not too bad.

ABC Wednesday - S

While we were in Vancouver earlier this year we visited Gastown and were intrigued by this lovely Steam Clock. According to Wikipedia it was built in 1977 and is powered by a steam engine.




As you can see I took this video of it at 4 pm. I had to put it on YouTube as I had difficulty uploading it to my blog.




Thanks to Mrs Denise Nesbitt and the ABC Wednesday team who host this each week. To see more of the letter S, please click here.

Getting Organised - Part 2

Following on from yesterday's post I have begun making lists and actually did a bit of Christmas shopping today. This week I shall make the cakes that I want to give this year. Last year, with the house move and being away for a month just before Christmas I made none so I really would like to make up for it this year.

So I have made a start!

Getting Organised

Having been given the news of Mum's imminent operation last week I realised a couple of days ago that I really should get on with some preparations for Christmas. Mum will probably be in hospital for about 5 days and I will want to visit her (the hospital is about 40 minutes' drive away), but once she is back at home I will have to be on hand for her, to make sure that she is OK in every way. The easiest thing (for me) would be for her to come and stay with us but I have a feeling that she will want to go straight back to her own home. Understandable. If that happens I will have to spend most of my time there for a few weeks. When I mentioned coming to us she just replied "well, we'll see nearer the time". Wherever, I will have a lot less time to do much about the forthcoming festive season.

So, the first thing is a priority list and then I will make the most of my time over the next couple of weeks, because once Mum does go into hospital, she will be my priority. In any case, everyone will understand if certain things don't happen and there is always next year!