Festive

I haven't been feeling the love for the upcoming festive season. I don't really know why, because I always enjoy getting the family together and spoiling them, but somehow this year the preparations have felt like a real chore. Usually by this point in December I have the house fully decorated, but until today all I'd done was hang a wreath on the front door, and compared with the rest of the village (which seems to be competing for some kind of light pollution award) our house has been giving off an bit of an Ebenezer Scrooge vibe.

Today I decided that it was now or never, and never wasn't an option, so R and I set to work straight after breakfast and bottomed out the conservatory dining room, then installed the tree and decorated it. By lunch time my phone was telling me that I'd done twice as many steps already today as I did across the whole of yesterday, without me even setting foot outside the house. Having gone into Action Woman mode I found it surprisingly hard to stop, and during what should have been a little breath-drawing hiatus this afternoon, between winding the tree lights and ribbon and hanging the baubles, I converted the remains of our autumn quince crop into luscious quince jelly.