Merry Christmas!

Best wishes to all for a joyful Christmas, and a wonderful 2008.

Our Christmas tree is only a simple. small one, but I think it's pretty:



And to continue in the seasonal traditions, I baked another batch of fruit mince tarts today - I wonder how long they'll last??

Solstice surprise

My DH isn't much into Christmas, so I usually give him a gift, or a special dinner, for the Summer Solstice.

This year I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, but I did come across some shelving on special at the hardware shop. Since we don't have a shed or garage, most of our shed-type stuff is stored in the carport, and it's been getting steadily untidier as we've acquired more equipment for our outback trips. The local black snake can find plenty of places to hide, which isn't a good thing.

So, on Friday, for a Solstice Surprise, I spent a fair amount of the day while the DH was at work putting together the shelves, sweeping out the accumulated dust, debris and spiders, and using the shelves to tidy up a large amount of stuff.



This is before the tidy up, and below is after:



Despite aching bits of my anatomy from hours of hammering together shelves by myself, I was pleased with the outcome, and so, too, was DH, which is what matters.

Snuggle time

No, this photo wasn't 'staged'. Ted lives in and around the basket; he's a favourite toy of our other dog, Tansy, who loves to play 'fetch Ted' (not to mention have a chew of Ted.) Jaffa, The Princess Dog, isn't much into games, but she does like to snuggle into things, and on this occasion Ted served the purpose.

This was taken not long after both dogs had been clipped, hence the shorter-than-usual fur.