Happy New Year!

(Our lane on Christmas Day as we walked to meet up with family.  Very pretty but slippery I can tell you!)

 Hello again and Happy New Year!!  I really wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas but computer problems and then being a little off-colour for a few days prevented me getting here. 

(My DS and his cousin playing TV console games later in the day at my sister's house)

 I hope you all had a wonderful time over the Christmas period!! We had a lovely time with family and friends and I managed to get all the homemade gifts finished.

 This is a cross-stitch bookmark I made from a kit that I bought when we visited The Centre for Alternative Technology in the summer.  It's for a good friend of mine.  Making it made me realise why I haven't done any cross-stitch for some time - it's time-consuming, fiddly and frustrating!!  It came to life when I added the backstitch but I'm not very inspired to do any again soon. 

 I made about 125 of these peppermint creams a couple of days before Christmas.  It wasn't easy to keep count of them with my DS around and, of course, having to "taste test" them.  :-)

 Here are the family's gifts ready to be wrapped.

 A closer view shows the finished coasters clearer.  The peppermint creams are in celophane bags in the mugs.

 The church in the village is spot-lit over the Christmas period courtesy of the local hotel opposite. I took this photo on our way back home quite late Christmas Day.

Just before Christmas I won a giveaway run by the generous Miss Prickly and my package arrived today all the way from Oregon.  I was lucky enough to be the winner of one of 3 prizes offered - this lovely colourful wristlet.  A lovely extra pressie just for moi!!!

Tonight there are 15 of us meeting at a friend's house for a takeaway, then we are heading for the village to join the locals to see in the New Year.

See you all again in, what I pray will be, a happy and healthy 2011 for everyone.
Bye for now
Teresa x