Well, it’s Wednesday again, which means another trip around the desks of the world with Julia as a guide.  I haven’t managed to post to this blog in a week, far too much going on, not enough time or inclination to blog about it!

Since you were last here the Christmas cards I was busy writing last week have all been posted and the decks have been cleared in favour of gift making!  Yeah I know, nothing like a bit of last minute pressure to galvanize me into action.  These gifts won’t be traveling over seas, we decided years ago not to bother with gifts because of the postage rates for parcels, so these are for local friends, some of whom we’ll be getting together with this coming weekend.

First up are some colourful “ruffle” scarves.  I’ve made three since Sunday and have a fourth almost finished too, just need to sew the ends in and they’ll be ready.  Next we have hand made soap and hand knitted wash cloths.  Andrew and I had a fun couple of hours on Saturday making these soaps, I’d made the cloths earlier in the year.

The two round soaps were made by Andrew, they’re clear Glycerin based with natural additives for the colour and fragrance, they’re not as dark in real life but the flash is bouncing off them.  The green one is green tea scented with lemongrass and the browny one top right is actually pinky and it’s lavender scented with rose clay providing the colour.  The other ones I made.  The brown one top left doesn’t look this insipid and mucky really!  It’s called Tuscany soap and it’s coloured with cinnamon, cloves and cocoa and is scented with cinnamon and oil of bergamot.  The one bottom right is my favourite, it’s an exfoliating sea salt and sea kelp soap scented with peppermint and grapefruit, so nice and refreshing, but not to be used on the face though.  We’ve got about 18 bars/rounds in total so there’ll be enough to stock up our own supply too.  Andrew has also made his Christmas tea that he does every year.  Basically it’s a black tea that he adds things like orange peel, broken cinnamon sticks, cloves and cranberries to.  It makes a lovely aromatic brew that tastes so good on a Winters day, really festive.  There’s enough of that to go in some sweet little jars we have.

On the home front I made and froze more pastry, Andrew made cookies and we’ve made a list of things to buy, food to make and what’s left to do.  I can tell you I’ll be putting my feet up the weekend before Christmas at this rate!!   There is one minor, little damper on my horizon over the holiday… I have an impacted wisdom tooth coming out on December 28th!  Not looking forward to that, but I was at the Oral Surgeon’s last night after work and the xray has revealed that it’s almost sideways in my jaw and pushing into the teeth next to it, it has to come out.  I only have the two wisdom teeth (yeah I know, explains a lot!) and one came through without any problems so I only have the one to deal with, unlike those unlucky people who get four taken out at once, need a full anesthetic and end up looking like they were in a pub fight!  The only other appointment I could have taken was on Christmas Eve and who in their right mind would want that done right before the big day!

Well, that’s me for this week, can you believe that two weeks today it will be Boxing Day and it’ll all be over for another year!  See you on the desk trail!