..above all else peace in 2025

I will be back early in the New Year with my New Word, new plans and new opportunities.

Enjoy the celebrations!

I have just had three very lazy days. They were lovely and the sky didn't fall in!

Are you starting to think of next year?  Will you choose a word for 2025?


This is one of the beautiful images from the Advent calendar I bought from Sarah Raven this year. Absolutely beautiful; it has been a daily pleasure. I must think of a daily pleasure for January. Any ideas?

If that's not a contradiction in terms! I am referring to the colour of the hellebore flowers which opened in time to decorate the Christmas table, but the food was pretty sumptuous too. 'Best ever Christmas dinner.'

We really had the nicest day.

I hope that you did too.

 The Madonna Knitting. 1929 print by Eric Gill

Wishing you all a very very happy Christmas.

It's 5.40 in the morning and I have just lit the fire and made a cup of tea. I have a nince pie on a plate beside me here as I write. It is blissfully quiet now that the wind has abated.  I had another power cut yesterday.  Many mature trees  have been blown over, including the one with my owl box on it, and the road was closed for a bit so my younger daughter did the Christmas food shop and she is bringing it all today as I am hosting Christmas dinner (hope the power cuts are over!).

One of the things I love most about Christmas is that so many people all around the world celebrate this one day. Astonishingly 370 million people tune in live to  the radio service from King's College Cambridge at 3 o'clock today.. In our crazy fractured world isn't that just WONDERFUL? 

I will be listening as we prepare tomorrow's food.  Will you? A marvellous time of unity.

Here is the post In Praise of Homely in which I ramble on about decorations! Whether your preparations are plain and simple or elaborate I hope your day goes smoothly and you enjoy every minute of it!As someone once said 'You might as well be happyy'.   :-)

Home made Christmas Tree Ginger Biscuits We used to hang them on the tree. One year my daughter's usually well behaved dog ate all the ones he could reach!

I could be content with a very plain Christmas, but I think I would actually be 'styling' it as plain, which could be kind of falsre if you see what I mean. As someone who loves variety and change and arranging things I do feel the need to push the boat out and make an extra effort to be different. We can afeter all be homely any day of rhe year.

I think I have evolved a way of being both simple and festive by starting early in December eith branches of fir around the house, then sprigs of holly and a scented candle or two ...I gradually build up to a more  flamboyant look as Christmas Day nears. Nearly ready for the finale..

and the relentless wind has roared round the house for 48 hours now.

As time went on I lit a candle.

The wind blew the bins over and the top came off the recycling one and the papers blew all over the garden. It nearly blew me over too when I went out to deal with it.

It got dark early and I lit a few more candles.

I was glad I had filled a flask this morning.

I decided to just light all the candles

Just as I lit the last candle, the electricity came back on! Truly!

A very large tree has fallen across the road. I am filled with gratitude for all the people who are out there sorting things in such dangerous conditions.

I hope you are all warm and dry and safe.

The window Christmas decorations of Ask Italian restaurant feature the statue of The Duke of Wellington with his traffic cone - an exapmple of a kind of wordless, irreverent Glaswegian humour which perhaps only Glaswegians fully understand..

Read more about it here

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The days will get longer now, but I wish the gale force winds would let up!

..were fun, and Glasgow was much less crowded tham Edinburgh.

But as we say in Scorland 'East west, hame's best'.

Is it posssible to chill out at this time of year? Of course it is I tell mysself. We don't have to have a full production. Scale back, there's still time to just buy the Christmas dinner (or part of it) and managing expectations can take some of the pressure off. The grown ups know that in recent years smaller gifts and bigger donations have been my thing. Goodness knows the donations are urgently needed and I do believe that sometimes all I can do is help the helpers in far away crises.

I have had to remind myself that The White Comapny catalogue is not how people actually live - even the people whose houses are in the photoshoots don't live like, or look like, the models in the photographs.

Christmas is a strnge mixture of fantasy and reality isn't it. When I come back from my little shopping trip I will write In Praise Of Homely..

..what you want your Christmas to be. My friend says women at this time of year become 'Christmas machines'.

Don't be a Christmas machine!  Step back, apply brain, choose a way of doing Christmas that means something to you. There's still time. Make a cup of something nice, get a pen and paper and 20 minutes to yourself and think about it...

..towards Christmas.

Down with the summer garden painting

and up with the Christmas star.

 A little bit every day. We'll get there.

..planted in pots because the conditions were never right to put them in the ground. I've just remembered  th!ere are still some tulips to be planted.  Still time..

This lovely wintry interlude is coming to an end with a thaw today and rain forecast. I have so enjoyed just  coorying in and staying home, venturing out to take photographs, bring in logs and feed the birds. I have given myself the luxury of keeping the stove burning overnight - so gorgeous to come down to in the mornings. I have indulged my romantic side, with rugs and candles, red wine and hot chocloate...whyever not?

Can you create a little romantic holiday feeling for yourself this winter, if not for a day ot two then even for an hour or two? What would you include?

As I say, whyever not?

Some frosts are more glittery than others. My photographs don't capture the brilliant sparkliness of the frost on the table, but you can perhaps make out the amazing ferny patterns..

Still frosty hard tonight and as I close the back door I hear an owl far up the glen. I wonder what it can catch on a night like this when surely all small creatures are sheltered deep in nests and burrows. I wonder too where my robins sleep.

..and she's wonderful. RHS qualified and experienced (she worked at the Botanic Gardens for six years) and as you can see  freezing temperatures don't put her off...we work well together.

And she's a good photographer. She took these shots on her way to my place yeserday morning.

Unable to distinguish the weedlings from the seedlings I was finding it hard to keep up the garden, so the plan is to have help in autumn and in spring. It is lovely to see it looking cared for once again. As many of you no doubt know, a garden can be lost in just one or two seasons. I feel as if mine has been rescued.

..in the garden today. Well wrapped up against the cold we got some serious tree pruning and clearing up done. So satisfying!

..by some of the natural decorations  I saw in Edinburgh..

At the Sankta Lucia service,

in the Urban  Angel restaurant,

I went foraging in the holly and beech hedgeows which  grow all along our village road. My robin followed me, twittering quietly and taking food from my hand! (I keep some in my jacker pocket.) Perfect company.

Candle from Ikea.

'Fireside' candle from The White Company - I love this scent.

Far from the mad crowds in Princes Street Elliots studio had a two day event selling very beautiful things of the finest quality.

Expensive, a bit, but I like to support artisan ventures if I can. I admire the commitment and integrity and skill. I bought this woven tree ornament, some soap, lip balm and narzipan fruits.

Thank you so much Liz - I woulld not have found this place without you! I enjoyed the whole lovely excperience.


I can't get the link to Elliots to work, sorry, but Mr Google will take you to their website.


Batten down the hatches all of you  in the storm alert areas here in uk! (Thinking of you MaryB.) I am listening to strong winds and heavy rain as I write here in my warm cosy home. So grateful.

..if you are visiting Edinburgh this festive season. On Saturday the Christmas Market in Princes Street was packed full, behind high barricades with burly security guards in high viz jackets at entrances and exits very much in evidence. It used to be an open space where you could drift in and out at will.

We made our way to St Andrews Square where a gentler atmosphere prevailed, not crowded and child friendly - toast your own marshmallows, write a letter to Santa in an alpine hut, wander through the Christmas Tree Maze - a hundred or more real trees with simple soft white lights. I think little children could easily imagine they were deep in  a forest. I know I did, but then Christmas brings out the child in me..

Still catching up with myself after a wonderful trip to Edinburgh.

Meanwhile here is our capital city looking amazing.

..by the Sankta Lucia service and procession  of the Scottish Swedish Society in Edinburgh....

I firsr experienced this ceremony in Stockholm in in the early 2000s (a huge outdoor event - it was like being in a  in a fairy tale) and last year a very beautifull Sankta Lucia in York Minster, (see 13 Dec 2023 ) but this one, in a friendly connunity, was  charming, more intimate, and with fika afterwards was as much of a delight.