Happy New Year!

Everything xmas-related got packed away today - early for us, but twelfth night falls on a work day this year so it was the most opportune time! Not that I believe any of that bad luck nonsense! The house looks so bare now! Alas one of my treasured paternal grandma's glass baubles got smashed in the process - we have a large carrier bag for the modern plastic ornaments and I was otherwise occupied re-wrapping the other glass ornaments in fresh newspaper (including two modern ones that I failed to find in time to hang them on the tree this winter), whilst also taking down tinsel and Christmas cards. I don't think the Cog realised that glass baubles make eggshells look thick! I had a lot of lovely cards courtesy of the amazing folks from the "For the Love of Letters" group on Ravelry via the Winter Cheer thread, so most of those came from the US. I will respond to the ones that contained little news updates, and the rest got recycled into gift tags. I think I need to create a collection of items that can be inserted into mail - stickers, cartoons, that sort of thing - because it's so nice to get a little gift in the post. The post seems to come in lumps at the moment - either six things all at once, or nothing at all. 

The festive season came and went with its usual plethora of over-eating and over-indulgence. Our xmas eve meal was memorable for including emergency onion gravy - I can only think we picked up vegetarian gravy but then put it back on the shelf, because there was no sign of it in the cupboards or the cars. One brother and his wife brought lovely sweet potato and red onion soup, and the other pair brought amazing biscoff cheesecake and apple strudel, all home-made. The turkey turned out ok and we had several meals from it, despite it not looking big enough to go around - I had made a vegetarian nut loaf earlier in the day which was also very nice, and way too much packet stuffing. We had quite the game of oven tetris - the new double oven isn't wide but it is surprisingly deep. The Cog accidentally grilled some items he had meant to roast, but everything turned out ok. I had a major mental blank surrounding mince pies and kept buying more of them (we still have some left now!) - I think it's because they're in a cubbyhole above the 'fridge I don't usually store food items in. We didn't have time to finish all the various items of alcohol gifted or purchased for the week, so I suspect we're good until March if we can save it for weekends. I think my favourite present was a lovely book on watercolours from my sweetie - I am looking forward to reading it - and my favourite food item this year was the M&S triple chocolate panetone. Alas, our xmas meal was also memorable for all three brothers and one partner coming down with a head cold at best, and a chest infection at worst. So my sleep's been somewhat shot, as a partner making hot drinks at 4am despite sleeping downstairs is liable to wake anyone up in a house this size. The weather was miserably wet and mild most of the week, with the odd blue-bird day in between. We mostly stayed home and watched classic tv, and I finally cast on for the second half of the sheep cushion cover. All the mad plans of hobbies to be tinkered with came to naught, as always - though I have resolved to try and book a few hours a week as "me" time. We both made it to just gone midnight but then went straight to bed - New Year's Day was just us, which was nice. 

Back to work tomorrow - and the gym, to work off some of the weight gained since the 23rd. Happy New Year to all my readers, and I hope 2023 is good to you. 

Current mood: tired