What's on top of the tree?

Grace and Harry spotted this lovely pengy just as we walked in to Tong Garden Centre yesterday to get our tree. They know about my pengy passion and so they headed straight for the little scene of polar creatures set up just by the entrance - there were fluffy polar bears, penguins, and various other creatures placed unnaturally together in the same environment, but in the name of Christmas festivities, we'll forgive their Zoological faux pas!

Anyway, when it came to putting the star or angel on the top of the tree - Harry suggested that we put the pengy on top of the tree.

I loved the idea!

In fact - I remember that there's a type of penguin called a 'Fairy Penguin' so it seemed very appropriate to be the fairy on top of the Christmas tree! 

OK so I know *this* one isn't a Fairy Penguin - looks like a King or Emperor - but hey ho with the semantics. 


I've got a fairy penguin on top of the tree!!

There's been a bit of snow.

It's been a little festive around the country. I think it's been more snowy down south (how very dare it!) but it's still been a little bit white up here! Here are a few pics showing the nice white road at night and 1st thing in the morning.

It looked really pretty.

The Christmas Tree is UP!

We've just spent a lovely afternoon with Grace & Harry who have for about the 5th year running, helped us put up our Christmas Tree. It's so late on in the Xmas season though, that I thought we'd never manage it. I've been feeling rather ill these last few days, particularly yesterday; very groggy, headachey and exhausted so I was quite glad that the guys were around to help us. 

The pictures are here on picasa.

We've got the whole thing off to a fine art - in and out of Tong garden Centre in a matter of about 20 minutes and the tree was put up in record time. Pizzas were consumed and the baubles went on. The whole event in about 3 hours!

Thanks again guys! Couldn't have done it without you!

Labels - what are they?

I've started trying to categorise the blog posts we write by adding labels. I started doing it initially, when we first wrote the blog back in 2007, but there didn't seem much point back then as I only had one post per category - I'd not written enough entries really to warrant categorising them.

However, now, looking back at the posts as a 'body of work', I'd actually like to bring up related posts together to be able to present them retrospectively to new readers, as opposed to those of you who have been following them in real time.

See what you think - I've added a labels widget below left. It shows all the lables in order of how many posts have been tagged with that label.

If you click on one, it should bring up all the posts I have tagged with that label.

Interestingly the top few are 'Holidays' 'Travel' and 'Food'!!! I wonder why that is????

This is what they look like at the time of posting this blog entry - but I'm nowhere near through getting all my posts retrospectively tagged, so this may change a little over time.

Labels

holidays (35) travel (35) food (17) internet-finds (13) Aus (12) techie (12) Raleigh (10) blogging (10) NZ (9) friends (9) sewing (8) work (7) concert (6) family (5) camping (4) moblog (4) break-in (3) countdown (3) fun (3) pain (3) rant (3) Fallas (2) London (2) Rome (2) Valencia (2) drinking (2) house (2) nice (2) panic (2) yorkshire (2) Italy (1) beginning (1) comment (1) gear (1) vodafone (1) zoo (1)

Messing with the templates again.

Well I've been at it again - faffing with the blog template. It's a little bit of a departure for me as up until now I've been very safe and used the templates provided by Blogger. Unfortunately, they weren't quite giving me what I wanted so I've learned how to import and save and edit a blog template - XML - and I think I'm happy! It certainly works. I like the 3 column layout as well. Gives a bit of extra interest on the upper part of the blog. I'd like to be able to get some of our photos in as faded backgrounds too. Oh well, that'll be the next lesson.

Hot Toddy

Because I've got a cold...

...we thought we'd break out the mulled wine from the delicious Cairn O'Mohr brewery in Scotland!



Look at that steam coming out of the mug!!!!

Made fish and chips!

...for tea the other night. Yes, real fish in batter. It was GORGE!

Lovely Flowers

These came to the door on Friday! It's been a tough few weeks and they cheered me up no end!

Just testing something for Emma

Here's a nice button I made for Emma's blog

Cut and paste the following html into your blog to add this button to your blog.

<a href="http://mimiandtilly.blogspot.com//"><

img src="http://www.soundwordsministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/mothers-day-flowers.jpg" /></a>

The Christmas Episode!

Hello & Welcome if you've come to the blog via the little Christmas message we sent out in our cards this year!

How quickly time flies! It hardly seems like a year since we waved goodbye to Mum, Dad and Janey after our lovely Christmas here last year!

So, what's been going on in 2009?

For those of you who follow the blog, you probably already know, as most of it is documented! For those of you who don't, then here is a guide to our 2009...


Food

• We bought a PIG (yes really!)
• yo!
• Lovely tea last night
• best hot and sour soup ever!

Trips/Hols

• We had a holiday in a weird little cottage in Cumbria
• Trip to Portsmouth
• New York & Vegas
• Venice Pics

Work & Geekery

• Liza went to Raleigh, again
• Dan on the night shift
• Lots of machines
• Norbert
  

Newsworthy Events

• Dan's Car blew up on the M62 -(1) A scary Phone call (2) Part 1 (3) Part 2
• Oscar
• Archie
  

Everyday Things

• A new project (Li's needlework)

Check out our Photo Albums

• Album 1 - this one has the older pics - going back to about 2007
  
• Album 2 - this one has 2 of the NY and LV albums on only
• Album 3 - most recent - including Archie, Oscar, Venice.
  

Of course, there's LOADS more in the blog - feel free to bookmark it and have a pootle around at your leisure.

So thank you if you've been part of our year this year, and we're sorry if we've not got round to seeing you in 2009. Lets get together in 2010 and you can be part of our special year next year!

Love, Li & Dan