Christmas Holidays 2013

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you. Wow, it has been awhile since my last post. I'm still here busy with Christmas Holiday, family and life! I have been busy packing in all the holiday activities! The Christmas day went off to a great start with beautiful weather that I was hoping for. Everyone was happy with their pressies including me. Mr Notjustnat gave me a new laptop I badly needed since my old PC was connected to the television screen to use when we Skype family in other states and overseas. 

I hope everyone has had a fabulous Christmas with family and friends. Ours was wonderful. Having the grandchildren around made the Christmas how it should be. Excitement built up a few days beforehand. Christmas stockings were full when they woke up on Christmas morning. Santa worked hard on his round to our house! There are quite a few photos on this post so I will keep the writing to a minimum. Enjoy!

I managed to remember to snap a few family shots during the day. Kitiya, Bron, Bella and Finn were eagerly waiting to open their presents.

Pavlova the Australian's Christmas desert. We had it late in the afternoon. Kitiya did a great job of decorating it. 

Some of the lovely gifts I received from faraway friend. Thanks Cynthia. I love them all!

These were from Geo. She knows I love vintage cloth, especially with blue embroidery. The book All the Love in the World is popular with Bella. Thanks Geo!

Cute set of crochet coasters that can be made into a teacosy and hand made soap from Dzintra. Thanks so much. These are only some of the gifts I received. I don't want to bore you with all my gifts.

My son and his beautiful family day out for Boxing Day sales. The children were very well behaved and enjoyed everything we did. These guys are the Bike Babies that travelled around Hokkaido by bicycle this summer.  

A couple of days before Christmas Kitiya came and helped with fruit picking. We have one apricot and one plum tree. With abundant rain that we had earlier in the year, both of the trees gave us lots of fruit this year.

After digesting Christmas lunch I showed Bron how to make a melon basket. Bron took to basket weaving like a duck to water. She always wanted to weave baskets and this was her chance.

The first batch of apricot jam. I made chutney with apricot and plum jam as well. I might have enough plums on the tree for another batch of jam later.

I did a lot of baking just before Christmas. Finn loves these biscuits. He calls them biscuits with a fountain on top!

I also made baskets. I started one when I showed Bron and then started the second one soon after that. I was trying to do the different "God's eyes" but I totally forgot how to do them after a few years.

Just to show you all the different plant fibres I used. The fibres were collected and dried. The colours of the fibres are totally natural. The colour you see here is how they are.

Here is my finished basket. I'm so thrilled with the shape, the colour, the god's eye and the handle. All the plant fibres were from the plants in our garden.

These are the baskets Bron and I made. It took us two afternoons to finish them. I finished my second one this afternoon as well. The second one is for Bella's 5th birthday in January.

I will leave you with our Christmas family photo that took two professional photographers and many shots later to produce. I must say it turned out great in the end! Thanks photographers.

I have been posting daily photos on Instagram as well. If you want to see more fun photos, please click on the link  here or on my blog sidebar above. 

I have a few more days off before heading back to work. I hope to get time to visit your blogs soon. Enjoy the rest of your holiday. I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year and thanks for all your lovely comments and friendship. I have been enjoying sharing my life journal with you these last 5 years of blogging. 

See you in the New Year.

Nat