New Year and a new post

May I wish you all a very happy New Year and my thoughts are with my readers in Australia.  It must be quite horrendous and I cannot begin to think how people cope with this.  We in the UK, may moan about our weather, either too wet, too cold or too hot but we don't usually have to contend with massive fires like this.  At the end of 2019 we have just had massive quantities of rain and where I live in Northamptonshire, the River Nene valley has had controlled flooding to prevent the town of Northampton from floods.  It has made my Nordic Walking group walks difficult; where to go without getting our feet wet, but we have managed.  We managed this one

only to come up against this one

which looked a little deep. long and actually fast flowing over the path so we had to turn round and go back through the first flood again!!

I had a lovely Christmas with my whole family in Kent.  I had to avoid floods getting there but the weather wasn't too bad on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Before I went I made these

A few mince pies to keep us going!

and this Artisan Apron

the pattern for which can be found here.  

On Christmas Eve we all went to the Christingle Service in church  and I noticed that the men in my family are almost the same height and my grandson (age13) is as tall as me now - 5'10' (1.76metres) and the two sons are well over 6 foot and I have to look up at them.

Younger son, grandson, older son

 Stockings were laid out for Father Christmas on Christmas Eve night

and so we had a lovely family Christmas.  Yes, Father Christmas did come - phew, but opening these was too early in the morning for me to take a photo!!

Boxing Day is always very relaxed and younger son and family left to go to his in-laws for the rest of the holiday and with older son's family I went into town for the Boxing Day 'meet' of the local hunt.  I know that this is a very emotive subject and in the UK hunting animals with hounds is now banned by law, so this was a drag hunt, but the anti-hunt brigade were out in full force.  I think it is still a wonderful sight.  I apologise for the quality of the these photos but as usual I pressed the wrong button and got a video!!  These are from the video

A very small pony!

What these photos don't show is that it was pouring with rain so we went home and worked on a jigsaw puzzle 

that was completed by the end of the day!!

I have my birthday on New Years Eve and I had a lovely time with my son in Cambridge and we went out to lunch, followed by the pantomime which is always a 'must see' at this time of the year.  My granddaughter aged 10 made this cake for me, with the only help being to put it in the oven and take it out as it was hot.

I was very impressed and it was delicious, so well done her.