Ho ho ho...here we go round again! Countdown to Christmas 2025, thread 1

[NoWordForFluffy]

365

Evening!

I'm tired after today, but the buffet was a success. Tomorrow it's dinner!

Everyone seems to love their gifts, which is always good. 😊 Bed soon as it's all go again from the morning!

222

Nice number. 70 will be happy!

It's been sunny with a chilly breeze here the last few days. Definitely not as nice for garden sitting. Good for washing drying though!

We have a load ready to go out and will do at least one more load today, maybe two.

First I shall take the dog out. Hopefully he'll be gentle with me!

The weather here is great for drying laundry, but a robin has started perching on the washing and pooing on it - I chased it off the laundry four times this morning
Was on the lookout for it because I had to wash the same duvet cover three times yesterday and a pillow case twice.

We have baby starlings swinging on the line doing that! The parents stick to sitting on the fences. The babies are more stupid adventurous and sit on the line!

There were a few having a bath in the birdbath earlier. Carnage!

I’m not a fan of starlings Fluffy - they come to our feeder and bath and bully away the various tits and sparrows.
Not as bad as the magpies though I suppose.

I’m taking a well earned break while DH is out with LO. I have washing waiting to go out so will do that now.
Housework is pretty much done, just need to Hoover upstairs (robot Hoover will do downstairs) so this afternoon will be focused on the garden.
We have gigantic weeds on the edge of the patio so will pull those up and spray weed killer in, tidy up my pots, give some TLC to my Christmas tree that isn’t looking very good and consider where to move my roses as they aren’t getting enough sun.

Have also promised to take LO to the park later so will do that when it cools down a little.

Starlings are beautiful but so noisy ! We sometimes get a massive flock of them in the garden then when I look the foxes have dragged something in and dumped it on the lawn ,
I don;t feed birds as I have cats and it seems really cruel to lure them with false promises ( "come and get food , I;ll look after you " would really be "come and BE food" !)

221

We went to see the play "Ghost Stories" yesterday , I've seen the film a couple of times , they translated it really , really well onstage (I think it was a play before the film )

As yesterday was 222 , , the Danny "Uncanny" Robins play 2:22 would've been a good choice

Edit - spelled his name wrong !

We love starlings, 70. They have such funny personalities! They're gorgeous to look at too. The babies are soooooo loud though!

We have wagtails, pigeons and blackbirds visiting us regularly too. Robins in winter.

We <think> our house martins may be back, as we had some on our balcony at 5.15 this morning. Hopefully they are.

I used to have a cat (back in the 80s) and I have a picture of him somewhere inside my Mum's birdhouse.
Edited to say luckily she never bothered to put food in there

220

Monday again <sigh> but looking forward to the Bank Holiday and quieter roads when the schools are off

Tomato plants have a few flowers but no fruits yet .........early days

One of our tomato plants has flowers. The other two don't yet. There's time yet! We have more flowers than we had tomatoes in total last year, so 🤞🤞

I don’t have any plants growing vegetables, but one of my cactus plants has 21 flowers on it. Bit scared that it will overdo it and die like my Venus flytrap did when it had too many flowers.

Your tomatoes are well ahead of mine. I did get a strawberry though at the weekend - i had to cut it into 4 😂.

219

Two hundred and teens....

There was a warning about behemoth strawberries Magnolia ( on some Google-link malarky ) , I think it was to do with choking risk due to the size rather than their plans to take over the world one-by-one as their seeds grow in your stomach .........

I've just ambled out and watered the pots .
I am wracking my brains for a climber but I am limited to what I like/where it will be/what I already have/what I cannot grow .

Slopes off the Gardening topic

We have some very small, very green strawberries here and I spend a bit of time every day stopping LO from eating them 🙄

I gave up on my tomato seeds, binned them and bought some small plants. Going to experiment with some in pots and some in hanging baskets as FIL swears it works.

In other garden news, I finally picked an Acer and will be plonking it in its new home on the weekend (it’s going in a wooden planter thing and I need to finish painting it - I started today but we have several).
Have also bought some pretty evergreen plants as I’m fed up of having no colour in winter.

And continuing in my rock & roll lifestyle, I started a proper Christmas 2025 master list. All that’s on it for now are the things I’d like to do with LO like a light trail and Santa train, a plan to cross stitch cards for my parents and make someone as a gift for a very good friend and a little note to remind me that last year was too busy and too much for LO so we need to space out family visits this year (and maybe tone down the amount of decorations I put up in the house )

218

70 I will be on the lookout for maneating strawberries in the garden...

Meeces your Christmas master list sounds like a lovely idea. I do something similar each year on Excel (coz like 70 I do love a list!) and it will have presents, budget, menu plans, activities, shopping lists, calendar, school events, all linking in and cross referencing. Its also a good one stop place to see what I did/didn't do the last few years as its all one document just referenced by years then I don't repeat presents or party meals.

I planted my tomatoes out into the troughs and I had 8 spare so I put them out on the street with a little note saying "spare tomato plants help yourself". And they all went so I was delighted.

Morning. Weather has completely turned here and it’s more like autumn, very grey and wet. Would be a great day for Christmas films and planning if it was later in the year

Magnolia my approach to planning is a bit of a PITA but I like it. I do a master list on my phone around now and it runs all year.
Sometime in September I’ll start another one purely for present ideas for the people we buy for and work out a rough budget.
I usually create a running To Do list at some point and chuck everything on that (and I mean everything, from ‘put up decorations’ to ‘collect order from XXX’ to ‘contact X and arrange to meet up.’
Then in October I get out my Christmas Planner (it’s a lovely book a friend bought me a few years ago), read through the last few years lists etc and move some of the phone lists into that.

As last year was our first year with LO, I also created a note on my phone with the dates of any events I thought might be worth considering (like Santa being in the local Christmas shop and toddler activity stuff) listed. Then I added when we were seeing family so I could see a calendar but in list form (much easier for my brain to process).
DH thought I was bonkers but as you can tell, I like a plan! 😂

And as if that wasn’t enough of a palaver, I have a nice notebook that I use as a little Christmas journal type thing and over the Christmas and new year period I write up what we did, who we saw, how it went etc

Reading that back makes me want to clarify, I’m not bonkers and it’s not as time consuming as it seems

Not bonkers at all, Meeces. I love a good bit of planning too!!

217

Not in the least bit bonkers Meeces at least not here on the Christmas Threads .

My DD is already planning her clothes for our Pre-Christmas Trip , she knows I;ve bought her cosy pyjamas (navy with stars) and wants to take them .

This weekend I'm going to try making some Cinnamon Buns , I can do the dough in the breadmaker then roll out and bake them . I always plan to make them for Christmas - I did one year , used the recipe book that came with the breadmaker.
I bought a Cinnamon Bun mix from Costco once but they were pretty ropey , more like bread rolls . Sweet dough should be rich and pillowey .

The Hairy Bikers' book has a great cinnamon roll recipe. I make them every year!

I'm on the way home from Manchester after a client meeting / dinner / drinks. Bit tired! Good day though.

216
Hopefully FluffyPup let you have a lie-in Fluffy

I bought the Traditional Greggs Breakfast ( pain au chocolat) for DD and some savoury pasties for DH after dropping my DS at work
Now planning some quiet housework as DD and DH are both WFH

Morning. Hope the drinks haven’t led to a fuzzy head this morning Fluffy 😳

I’m sure you’ve said but my brain is mush - where are you going for your pre-Christmas trip 70?

It was warm here yesterday and I spent a few hours in the garden painting planters. I clearly missed some patches with my factor 50 as I’ve burnt a bit around the back of my neck and shoulders. FFS 🙄

Having a quiet morning at home today so will clear the washing, tidy up a bit etc then when LO is in nursery I have some boring errands to run (prescription, making a few phone calls, filling in a form and posting it). Exciting stuff 😂

We're going to Glasgow Meeces early Dec , so they;ll have their decorations up .

I am Officially Done With Christmas Markets now , having been to Bruges and Amsterdam last year and Bath a couple of years ago . It was a lovely festive experience but it's out of my system now .

I was in Glasgow last year ( going from Central to Queens Street ) and thought "Oh this is worth a re-visit " ( I lived in Glasgow in the late 80s so lots of change! )

DD plans to explore the Argylle Street Arcade . a whole arcade of jewellery shops - I don;t think she'll leave empty handed .....

I always feel Christmas markets here are a bit over-hyped 70
Birmingham was too big and busy for me, and the nearest one (Cardiff) is rubbish. Only one I enjoyed was Edinburgh. It’s my dream to do Bruges and Prague and maybe Salzburg markets though!

I hope the Glasgow trip is good. It’s funny, I’ve been through the city but never looked around and I mentioned to my friend and her DH about wanting to go. Her DH was born and brought up there - he looked at me like I had 2 heads and was very confused about why I’d want to go while my friend was very enthusiastic about how nice it is 😂 She’s the only person I know how is excited to
visit her ILs.

Im back from errands and have 10 minutes before leaving for the school pick up. My god the daily school run grind is crap!

215

Rain here (well, it is Bank Holiday weekend )

Going to mosey off to Large Shopping Centre of DD Choice ( she has 'A List' )

I was going to have a look in TKMaxx yesterday but I was in town about 8am to buy the Greggs Breakfast so CBA waiting a hour for it to open .