Rolling Along into Christmas

It's all been getting rather Christmassy recently, both at home and in Belfast City Centre. During the first of two visits from my family we took in a fair bit of the city's festivities. My sister's boyfriend had never been to Ireland, let alone Northern Ireland before and so it was our duty to show them how awesome the place is. And Belfast didn't disappoint. The Belfast City Hall Christmas Continental Market was one of our many stops during our meanderings as we gave them a 'residents view' tour.

More on that visit later when I get chance, including our multi-weather coach tour along the North Coast - I'll at least post the windswept photos before too long.

After our guests had headed on home again, we looked at the calendar and unable to see another time that would suit putting up the Christmas decorations, we chose... ASAP.

And up they went. The tree and the rest of the festive themed shiny items are out and about the house. Including this Tiffany Glass Christmas Tree Decoration from our 1st Wedding Anniversary New York trip last year.

We've been saving like mad for our next US trip in early 2012 and this Christmas Decoration is a nice memory that we'll always link back to our wedding and first year of marriage. We're old hats now though, plenty into the 2nd year and counting so it came as little surprise when I was placed on the naughty list by Norngirl via Portable North Pole this website along with Elf Yourself are now a common place email lolage along the advent calendar journey to the big day. Talking of advent calendars, someone should tell Sesame Street to do a Christmas Special on advent calendar numbering, my advent calendar this year had me checking the back to see if I'd missed a box, turned out to just be my eyes and some chameleon like text/background.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we also bought a toy train, just a cheap and cheerful £5.99 battery powered plastic thing. We'll hopefully be painting and decorating it in due course but for now this is how it looks sat under our tree.

If only I could be as "calm and organised" (to quote Matthew Corbett in the Sooty Show) in my Christmas Shopping. Hardly scratched the surface of that job. On the plus side we did manage a bit of charity work manning the Giving Tree for a couple of hours. A worthy cause if you are in Belfast, like shopping and can spare a bit of money, just head along to the top floor of M&S (up until the 10th December) and pick up a tag and buy a present then drop it back. Sadly the UK and Ireland is still unable to look after it's most needy, even at Christmas time. Until the politics and economic idiocy of this country and others is rectified, if you can spare some money to give a present, it really could be the spark that helps a child through a hard time and set them on the way to better things.

So with all that in mind, a busy few weeks ahead. More soon.