Getting there...

The girls and I have been sorting out the sitting room today, rearranging the furniture and putting up the decorations. The tree is up - at last - and the girls are satisfied with our efforts. We have to move things around to accommodate the tree, and an extra table for the Christmas jigsaw - it is usually a 1000 piece job, so it demands a table of its own, ideal for pottering over it and popping the odd piece in now and again when you have a spare moment to sit down. We actually have two to do this year, as it got overlooked last year!

The most gorgeous smell is emanating from the kitchen tonight as I have a chicken in the slow cooker, along with some onion, celery and parsnip - it might make tomorrow's lunch as a pie once it is cooked.

Now that the tree is up, cards are posted and we are in the mood, I am beginning to get into the swing of this - the marzipanning of the cake is on the plan for tomorrow.

The FH is feeling fragile tonight as he fell over this morning - well, he fell off a ladder in the garage when he was putting some books back on the shelves. He had a little wooden stepladder, which broke, so now it just consists of the ladder part without the supporting leg and rather than mending it, he has been leaning it against the shelves. Today it slipped and he ended up on his back on the floor, and he has scraped his leg and his elbow, and feels a little shaken up! He is now in the bath and having an early night.

We were delighted to watch the final of Strictly Come Dancing tonight - we voted for Matt Baker, but Kara was a deserving winner. I wouldn't have been surprised if Pamela Stephenson had won as she was also excellent and her show dance was the best - the other two were really a lot of posturing and not a lot of dancing!!

A very generous friend of the FH has given us LOADS of DVDs this weekend - probably nearly 200 of them!! This friend's father has had to go into a residential home and can't take them all along, so the friend has been tasked with getting rid of them - and the FH was in seventh heaven looking through them all as there are a lot of action films which he loves. They are all in excellent condition - he was delighted to find a DVD of Andre Rieu and his Johann Strauss orchestra playing in Australia, so that kept him amused for over two hours last night as he was completely taken with the music. There are more Steven Seagal films, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Bruce Willis, the Bourne Trilogy, Delta Force, etc - lots for him to enjoy!