Christmas crochet experiment

It all started with a Christmas jumper competition at work. I had no ambitions to win, but felt the need to take part so I bought a fairly innocuous snowman jumper:

Jumper from Next

Then I spotted this superb snowflakes pattern on the lovely Attic 24 website. I quickly got to experimenting with various scraps of wool...

I laid them out and roughly stitched them in place (in the hope that they will be easily removed afterwards!).

Pretty jumper in the course of less than two hours. Am ready to rock it at work!

PS - on the subject of snowflakes, here is the group picture from my ballet adventures the other week. I didn't get it in time to put in the original post:

Small goodbyes

This weekend I had to return my "something borrowed" from our wedding day - the hair clips I wore. (It was pointed out to me that if I didn't give them back then they would become "something stolen", which really wasn't the idea!)

I was a teeny bit sad about this, so took a last photograph of some of my wedding jewellery to make me feel better:

In other slightly sad news, one of my favourite magazines is being discontinued. Zest is a really positive healthy life magazine which is fun and realistic. It's a great mix of helpful advice, inspiring articles, fashion and recipes. I'm very sad to hear that it is closing. I hope that they continue their twitter feed for a while at least...

The last edition :(

Luckily at this time of year there are lots of little things to make me smile too, such as cuddles with my baby nephew on Sunday and these adorable and simple Christmas lights I spotted this evening. Much nicer than those huge displays you get in fancier parts of town :)

Glorious baking for breakfast

I can't tell you how nice it is to have an empty weekend! I loved firework season but it's very tiring. This weekend I have precisely zero plans (and a to-do-list that has grown exponentially over the last month!).

Friday night was dinner out with university friends. We went Greek (which is one of my favourites at the moment). Both of my friends are vegetarians so this was a perfect choice for them:

I'm sure they thought I was crazy when I grabbed my phone how could I resist taking a picture of these wonderful meze starters?!

Saturday morning started slowly and lazily. I eventually decided that, although I had eaten way too much the night before, breakfast was desperately needed. I grabbed Mary Berry (well, her cookbook!) and disappeared into the kitchen to see what ingredients we had.

20mins later - drop scones with natural yoghurt and pears stewed in honey. Yummy yummy :)

A great start to a relaxed but nicely productive Saturday...