Christmas is over

Christmas is over, Mum and my brother have gone home, and that means that our race to get the house respectable in time has been won. My Mum and my brother arrived on Christmas Eve to stay until yesterday, and we only have one guest room, so the study/music/craft/general dumping room had to be cleared out so that Mum could sleep there. That really did take 6 weeks!

There has been a lot of church and singing in the lead-up. I played Mary in the parish Star Trail production for the whole of a precious week. I sang at several carol services, and DH and I both dressed up as carol singers in the town's Victorian Fair. We even had a wedding to sing at yesterday - a beautiful naval Christmas wedding.

I was the Server in church for midnight mass on Christmas Eve, and I was so worried about getting it wrong, or my brain freezing with nerves and not letting me add up the number of wafers required, but it went pretty smoothly. Less than 11 hours later, we had 6 for Christmas dinner: MIL, FIL, Mum and my brother, and DH and me. It was the first time we have hosted in more than 10 years, and I was using my new kitchen. No pressure then! I couldn't have done it without DH's help. It went well. The dinner, with everybody's varying diets catered for, was a success. I won't say that my lost sleep, jitters and panic were unfounded, but now I know that I can do it.

On Boxing Day SIL, BIL and our niece and nephew came over for their presents, and made so much excited noise that I think Mum turned off her hearing aid so she could have a little nap. Our nephew got nearly all the Skylanders Giants, I think. Our niece got a HobbyCraft extravaganza - a pink plastic box filled with card-making, scrappy goodies. At 9, her mother thinks she is old enough for a mini paper trimmer, although I was worried about the blade. She never does her crafting unsupervised though so she should be OK. I can't wait for her to come over and stay again, and bring her stash so we can make pretty things together.

I was lucky enough to get a lot of socks, shower gels, chocolate and scrappy things, which was what I wanted. I'm happy.

Normal crafting service will be resumed as soon as I have unearthed my desk, put away all my new things and the Christmas detritus. And...... come back next year to see the new ideas that we have for Scrap Whispers.

Happy New Year to everyone!