December - Lately I've been...

The year is drawing to a close, and it's such a busy time of year. This first full week of December always seems to be when everything collides, both at home and at school, and I spend most of my time out and about in the cold ferrying children about and making sure that everyone is where they need to be. I can't wait until the end of term when we can all hunker down at home for a couple of weeks! So here's what I've been up to lately:

Thinking about

I'm enjoying remembering our wonderful holiday last month, and I've been busy putting together some themed videos about the places that we visited. Although I've been putting them up on YouTube to share, they are really just for us to look back on in years to come.

I'm also planning some projects for the new year. Two years ago I worked on my daily crochet Sky Blanket, then this year I've been taking video each day so that I can compile a 'year in seconds' video. This has been quite stressful to be honest as it has involved remembering to take the video every day - at least with the Sky Blanket I could catch up when I missed a day! So I'm trying to come up with a yearly project for next year that is quite flexible. I put together some ideas for a long term craft project last year, or I might try and work on one different craft project each month, I have a few kits ready to work on.

Crafting

I seem to have been very busy this month, but I've found the time to make a start on my Cross Stitch Map (affiliate link). I decided to start with Australia as that's my favourite country and it's a nice big one. The kit only came with just enough green to fill in Australia, so I've decided that I'm going to use green for all the countries that I've visited, but using different shades for each one. Luckily I have quite a big stash of embroidery silks, so I should have enough to keep me going! I used yellow to make stars on the cities that we've visited, and I left Tasmania blank as we've not been there yet. I'm not sure where to work on next, I might make a start on Europe.

I've also been making a start on the Christmas crafting with these Christmas paper craft printables from Twinkl, and I've brought down the box of Christmas crafting bits and pieces so that we can all make some festive decorations together.

Watching

It's been a busy month for watching! At the cinema we went to watch Thor: Ragnarok which I enjoyed very much. At home I'm working my way through the latest season of Outlander which I much prefer to the last season. Then last week we went to watch The Killers at the O2 which was awesome, a really great show.

Eating

Oh, far too many biscuits as usual! And the Christmas chocolate boxes are already being worked through. My intentions to try and cut down a bit before Christmas haven't really worked, so I guess that's something to save until January now. One thing that I've not had yet is a mince pie, I'm the only one that likes them so if I buy a box I have to eat them all...I'm trying to hold back!

Travelling to

Since our big holiday last month we've been enjoying some time at home and not moving very far at all! We will be travelling up to Warwick to visit family before Christmas and we'll be going along to the Carols at Warwick Castle event with friends, so that should be lovely and festive.

Reading

I really enjoyed reading The Year of Living Danishly (affiliate link) by Helen Russell all about her experiences of moving to Denmark, lots of humour, and interesting snippets about Danish daily life. I've also just finished The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k (affiliate link) which was quite a refreshing read, and as well as helping me to think about the things that don't matter it's also encouraged me to spend my time doing and thinking about the things that do matter. I have a couple more books from my birthday stash to get to, next up will be The Book of Dust - as soon as Harry has finished it!

Planning

At the moment I'm trying to get as much blog and social media stuff out of the way as I can so that I can have a break over Christmas. I love having my editorial calendar all filled up, even if the posts aren't quite written yet at least I know what I need to do! (If you are working on a Christmas blog schedule you might like this list of Christmas blog post ideas!)

Luckily I don't have to get too stressed about buying for Christmas as our family is quite small and easy to sort out, it's just a case of remembering everything and getting it all wrapped. I've not started the Christmas cards yet so that's something that I need to get on with, and I still need a few little bits but I'm almost there.

Looking forward to

I'm very much looking forward to the end of term, even though it comes quite early for us on the 15th December. I love those days around Christmas when there is nothing to do apart from sit around and eat nice food, especially now that the children are that bit older and don't require quite as much entertaining and supervision.

What have you been up to lately?

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