Are you over it yet?

[minesapintofwine]

My festive feeling suddenly bit the dust yesterday. I'm surrounded by toys which I'm going to start tidying up now. Plan for today is to build a huge Lego set and hide under the duvet, but it's all starting to look a bit tired. I have some Christmas chocs to finish off that might help.

Has Christmas finished for anyone else?

Absolutely not! Although our decorations will have to come down tomorrow (sob!) as we're off on holiday Friday. I wish I'd put them all up a week earlier now, we usually do 12 nights before and 12 nights after.

No, but then mine only started on Christmas Eve when we put up the tree and the decorations. I have plans for fun things to do with my friends or my children every day til I go back to work on 4th Jan. Maybe if you start earlier the fun runs out earlier - just a thought not a judgement.

Yes definitely! Our tree was down yesterday. I love the run up to Christmas, the aftermath not so much.

We are now in phase two. Phase one lasted from Fri until yesterday afternoon when the house was in chaos with my parents, MIL & BIL staying & DH running around being the perfect hosts; yesterday afternoon & evening was the big clear up & sort out and now we just have a few days to do as we wish before phase three which is a fairly hedonistic NY weekend. These three days are often some of my favourites & were before I had DC & always worked as they somehow feel as though real life is suspended.

Still Christmas here! Will be until the Saturday after Twelfth Night when we have our Twelfth Night party to say goodbye to the festivities. The decs will come down on TN itself (sob) but we leave plenty of warm white fairy lights festooning everything until the evenings get lighter - we take a few down in time for Easter, when the Easter decs go up. I'll be starting my Easter planning in the next few weeks

Today we had a full Christmas dinner with all the trimmings and gifts as we do every New Year's Day - family tradition and eases the 'week ago now' sadness. Classic FM have had carols on and it feels like Christmas night! Just having a Baileys and waiting for Sherlock. Bliss!

Yep. Tree down today... Went to a panto tonight. Its not so much christmas I'm done with bloody hate NY.

Well and truly.

The Queen leaves her decorations up until February.

The Queen leaves her decorations up until February

I've got images of her wrestling fairy lights and scolding Phil for not wrapping the glass baubles properly now

I'll be starting my Easter planning in the next few weeks

I actually can't wait to get started on that. But I want to do a nice Twelfthnight breakfast with DS on Thursday before I start taking the decorations down. Then I have a Women's Christmas night out on Friday. I'm feeling quite Spring-y/Easter-y already though as despite the fact that it's very cold out, it's lovely and sunny. I think I'll buy a few bouquets of flowers to keep the house bright once the lights come down and invest in some new scented Candles to replace the Apple and Cinnamon ones that I'll be putting away. I can't decide between vanilla (which still feels cosy and wintry) or citrussy which feels fresh and spring like.

I am however very much looking forward to taking the lights off my windows and opening the windows wide for a bit. The house could do with a freshening blast of air.

Getting to that stage I think. Last visitors left today and I'm getting twitchy about the state of the house - it would be nice to clean properly without dusting around cards, decorations etc before I go back to work. But I still enjoy making the most of this time of year - I'm planning on keeping some of our current activities going a little longer, like candles, warming food, board games, stomping outside in the cold etc. And hot chocolate with cream on the top, at least till the tub is used up. I love Christmas, but it will be 'over' here once school and work dictates our routine. We celebrate 12th night though with a nice meal and galette, then that's that.