Busy, busy, busy!

I normally like to post Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but this week I haven't done a lot of journalling. I haven't even looked at the next Journal Fodder 365 prompt which I should be posting on Monday.

So what have I been doing instead? (Because you know that I have to have been doing something creative.) Well, at the Christmas Eve church service my husband likes to give away a gift bag. One year we had 'Advent in a Box' which was a Chinese takeaway cardboard box with a whole bunch of lovely things in it that you could use to tell the Christmas story. This involved me cooking 400 cookies in the week before Christmas when my cooker broke down…

This year the Christmas decorations above will form part of the giveaway (they have since been given loops of silver thread to hang them on the tree) and I'll be using the hand-cut stencil below to decorate the bags.

Keeping in mind that there are 100 bags and (so far) 6 different items to design/make/fold or whatever, you can see that I've been pretty busy! 

What special crafts have you been doing this Christmas?

Open the box

For all of you who celebrate Christmas, I'm sure there has been a lot of giving and unwrapping of gifts going on in the last few days. My husband's sermon on Christmas Day was all about gifts. There are certain things that need to happen to get the most out of a gift.

First, you have to receive it. It is possible to be given a gift that we don't actually take.

Second, you have to unwrap it. A gift that is received but not unwrapped is just a pretty box.

Lastly, you have to use it for its purpose. A gift that is never used just gathers dust and is as useful as a block of concrete.

So my question is: have you truly received your gifts, torn off the wrappings, and plunged right in to make use of them?

Reverb 12 - day 1

December 1st. The start of advent, the lead in to Christmas. And the first day of the #Reverb12 challenge.

The first prompt was: How are you starting?

For me that can be summarised in one word: discombobulated!

My insides and outsides do not match up on this. My head is in the north and my body in the south. On the outside I am at the beginning of summer, the sun is shining, and plants are flourishing. On the inside I am at the beginning of winter, things are dying down and I'm heading for a time of hibernation. Outside it's all floral, inside the days are drawing in and getting darker (not in a depressed sort of way, but just like the short days and long nights of winter).

So there you have it. That's how I'm starting.

How about you?

Does not compute!

Here in Dr. Seuss-land the bright red of the bottle-brush trees has given way to the mad mauve jacarandas. Spring is definitely here.

And that's the problem.

For a northern hemisphere girl Christmas is firmly ensconced in the winter. It comes when the days draw in, the weather turns colder, and all the pretty lights appear in town centres. Christmas in the summer just isn't right.

Yes, there are fairy lights and decorations (inflatable snowmen, anyone? Yes, really) but the sun is shining, the temperature is starting to soar into the thirties and promising to go higher, and the days are long. We are enjoying time at the beach, swimming and beach-combing. In my head it's July or August. It is not approaching Christmas.

During the rest of the year I am pretty organised - I manage to send out birthday cards 3-4 weeks early so they arrive on time - I am always looking ahead on the calendar to make sure I don't miss anything. But it hits November and all of that seems to go out of the window. All of the environmental cues are wrong.

I lose the plot.

So now you know. For the next few months I will be disorganised, unfestive, and too hot. Such is life.