Day 15: Decorating Weekend Day One

Every year for as long as I can remember, we've had a Decorating Day in mid-December, when all the decorations come downstairs and the house and tree are decorated for Christmas. We're always later with our tree than most people I know, largely because we like to leave it up through the Christmas season rather than take it down just after Christmas.

But this year has been different. Because of various Grown-Up Considerations, we're having a Decorating Weekend. It's not unheard of for the tree to sneak in a day early, but this year we have also brought down all the decorations for tomorrow. Talk about being organised!

Pictures 1 and 2: After the Railway Room (which is still happening, guys!) is finished, our next major house-project will be the under-eave cupboards. These are an incredible area of storage space that we have on the top floor of the house, but they aren't really fully utilised at the moment. Today we made a sneaky start on them by doing the Christmas Cupboard. Going all the way in there to clean was not for the fainthearted, but we got there in the end! These are Before and After pictures:

Picture 3: *Excuse the first of our toilet pictures* Today we brought in the Christmas Tree. We had to lie it diagonally across the Shower Room floor because Mummy was cleaning the Living Room and there was nowhere else to put the tree.

Picture 4 and 5: It turns out that Orlandos like to sit on Christmas Trees. Interesting.

Picture 6: During a cup of tea and biscuit (we didn't have lunch!), we took this sneaky selfie. This was actually while Orlando was curled up on the tree!

Picture 7: Also during the not-lunch lunch, I took a cool picture through a cafetiere.

Pictures 8, 9 and 10: We had a fantastic dog walk today as the wind carried us along most of the way! On one of the gates, we saw a woolly hat. The people up here are great at making sure that people find anything they might have lost!

Picture 11: Ginny tried to saw some of the tree with a bread-knife. Much hilarity ensued (fear not, Orlando was safely crated at this point!).

Pictures 12 and 13: After last year's devastating TREE DOWN!, we have tied the Christmas Tree up very, very well! Ginny celebrated her hard work by doing an impression of our Preying Mantis Tree.

Picture 14: Our tree came ready-decorated - look at this beautiful pine cone!

Picture 15: Clemency is all ready for her work night out on this picture. She don't half brush up well, that young'un!