Frank and Josie's House

Hi all. It's taken me forever to do a blogpost because life has been busy! There's been crochet (obviously), kids away on school trips, me being ill (again!!!), visitors, organising holidays and housesitters...all very first world problems. But I know you're all desperate to here about what I've been up to so here it is: We tool our visitors into Toulouse for a little bimble. It was a lovely, easy trip and we found some beautiful side streets and ended up having lunch by a haberdashery and yarn shop. It's like I was drawn to it. I picked some gooseberries from our bush. The juice didn't get further than this as I fell ill but it is waiting for me in the freezer to do something with. What a wonderful colour! Oh so much gorgeous nature and beauty around us. It's bloody hot and we're all getting used to sweating (urgh!) but it does produce some wonderful things like cicadas singing in our garden and many, many flowers on our school run. Yes, one day I had...

Making sure those important letters get there.  Well it's just one week to go. Are you ready? It's one of those annoying facts of growing up which means Christmas becomes more about the organisation than the magic but that's part of the trick isn't it: keeping the magic alive for the children and (more than a little bit) for myself. I love Christmas but organising ourselves to make sure we have everything in order to spend Christmas 500 miles way from our now home is a bit of a military operation. I've single-handedly  kept Amazon in business for another year and made sure things get to the right addresses. I normally like to check Amazon packages in advance of gifting  but I'm having to trust this year. Anything that's not right is just too bad (there's always the return button). My dad told me the guest double bed at their house is covered in packages. (I'm always a bit dubious with the amount of packing that Amazon use as I think it's more th...