This week

I'm reading

It's been a bit of an odd reading week! 

I finished Golden Girls on the Run by Judy Leigh which was a lot of fun and which I reviewed here.

After that, I pretty much hit a reading wall. I think it is because I don't have any more due dates for blog tours etc so I looked at the 50 books or so that are at the top of the various folders (amongst the thousand or so that I have on there) and couldn't decide which book was next up.

It turns out though, that a delayed flight and three hours sitting at an airport, can help with that. I read Best Wishes From the Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, which is the second book in the Full Moon Coffee Shop series and is set at Christmas.

I then quickly read the epilogue to Helen Rolfe's Best Days of Our Lives which was lovely. 

On the way home I read The War Time Book Club by Kate Thompson. I have had a couple of her books on my TBR pile for a long time and I have to say I am wondering why I waited so long!

I'm watching

I haven't watched my normal number of Christmas movies yet this year and I can't see that changing this week which is a shame. I did watch Tinsel Town which stars Keifer Sutherland and Rebel Wilson as well as a few familiar British actors. It is about a washed up American action star who ends up in a small town doing pantomime. It was a bit of fun but if I was given away prizes, the prize for worst Yorkshire accent goes to Rebel Wilson. Here's the trailer

We did go to the movies to see a delightful documentary called The Golden Spurtle. It is all about the World Porridge Making Championships which is held in a small Scottish town of Carrbridge each year. You would think that a movie about porridge might be a bit stodgy but it was a lot of fun! We bought a spurtle when we were in Scotland but we haven't used it yet. Here's the trailer

We watched the first episode of the second series of A Man on the Inside with Ted Danson. We really enjoyed the first series and I hope to watch more this week!

Life

We did a quick trip up to Brisbane this weekend to do Christmas with the kids before they start travelling to their Christmas destinations!

We had dinner at a lovely restaurant and then we went to the beach with Nala, the golden retriever who used to live with us! Oh, and the kids and their partners!

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Set in Snowy Places
Blog Tour: Golden Girls on the Run by Judy Leigh
Weekend Cooking: Christmas at Hollybush Farm by Jo Thomas
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: November statistics





I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date, Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz and the Good Book and a Cup of Tea link up hosted at Boondock Ramblings

2023 Christmas Ornaments

Now that my husband and I have been travelling together for a while, we have now got some pretty well established routines.

Firstly, we like to buy a fridge magnet, and then we buy Christmas ornaments, and then a new thing which we started over the last year is buying Pandora charms to add to my bracelet.

We just put up our Christmas tree for this year. We haven't over decorated it because are not wanting to provide too much temptation to the dogs, but we did put all the new ornaments on. Here are the ones we acquired in our travels this year

This one comes from Amsterdam. We did buy a glass one from Valkenburg which was a town we visited in the Netherlands where they hold Christmas markets inside a network of caves near the town but the ornament did not survive the trip home. I posted about the markets in the Netherlands last year. Re-reading the post make me wish we were going back this year, but we are not!

We got this one when we visited Bayeux

These ornaments look quite small in the picture but they are actually a set of three with the big one being about 12cm diameter. We got these at Chambord which is a chateau in the Loire Valley

We got both of these from Chenonceau which is another magnificent chateau in the Loire Valley. We had already bought the white and gold one when I saw the silver one as we were just leaving the gift shop so I had to have it!

No prizes for guessing where this one was from!!

This one comes from Naples, which was a surprisingly Christmassy city! There was a whole lane in the old town dedicated to Christmas!

Fast forward to October and we were on another trip. This ornament looks more like our Christmases but this ornament is actually from Hawaii

And here is our final new ornament for this year from Vancouver.

Here is the tree (without the makeshift fence to keep out the doggos). We didn't really need the fire on because it was quite warm on the day we put up the tree but it does look nice

And here are the doggos in question looking very innocent

I am sharing this post with the Virtual Advent tour hosted at Sprite Writes