xmas

i saw very little sign of life this morning whilst walking to work. even the street cleaners were thinner on the ground (quite literally). but i did see some evidence of night-before partying.
here is an estate agents office. through the window i could see a bottle of champagne and a half empty glass on this person’s desk. i assume this is from last night, but maybe it’s a very bling-blingy hair-of-the-dog ?

and here is someone’s bow tie. i’m sure there’s a story behind it’s removal. you’ll have to make that up yourselves.

day eighteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s an angel

here is the day’s photo. it’s of the angel from our christmas tree which we didn’t put away in the christmas decorations box in january. it’s been up all year which has been nice.

hasn’t she got the coolest hair and halo ?

jane has been as busy as a busy bee. i was a little busy, but only at the implimentation and printing stage. jane drove the concept, construction and dispatch phase.
“what am i on about ?” you ask. “christmas cards” i answer.
2003
i’m not going to reveal our 2003 christmas card just yet as some readers will be receiving their’s by the method of her majesty’s royal mail.
(others will have already seen it and are here to claim their money back guarantee).
update: you can see 2003’s here
however, here are some ones of years gone by for your delight. it’s interesting to see how things have progressed. my photo shop skills have improved for sure !
CLICK PHOTOS FOR BIGGER VERSIONS
2002
a paper nativity with movable characters. the first few photos are from the photo shoot. this was kezia’s first appearance
.

the final card and commemorative top trump card (i went a bit photoshop mad last year):

2001
kezia hadn’t been born and esther was an angel.


2000
esther as a toddler

1999
what was i thinking. it must have been the 6 months of sleepless nights with esther which made this such a poor entry. i can only apologise to anyone who received this card for the quality.

1998
this wasn’t too bad – i stuck our heads on someone else’s picture i think

1997
the earliest card on electronic record. we were married in 1996 and i don’t think we did anything fancy card-wise that year (i don’t think we even had a proper computer). but we did by 1997 and we went kerazee !

day seventeen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a candle

and here is my photo. finding a shop in london which sold forks (so i could take a picture of their handles) was quite a challenge. see this two ronnies sketch for an explanation

day sixteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a teddy

here are the photos. it’s paddington bear as seen as paddington station in london. i go through paddington station every day. paddingston station is of course named after paddington bear.
paddington station also named after a small welsh hamlet famous for producing fluffy cotton wool (a derivation of padding-town).
all of the facts above are false (and therefore a fictions).
here is paddington with his mysterious eyes. the photos were taken nearly 10 hours apart (on the way to work, and on way back again)

here are some inflatable snowmen who felt like i did yesterday.

day fifteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a reindeer.

here are the photos:
tacky plastic reindeer in a shop window – note how they’ve kept the foam pieces in their plastic bags to prevent a mess

and here is my plastic reindeer barometer dressed in a crown, hair extensions and tie. on the right is a moose with a charles and diana biscuit tin balanced on its head

there is a house not too far from us which has gone way overboardon the decorations. it’s appeared in a few national papers because their neighbours aren’t very happy. the house in question is down a very exclusive private driveway where most of the houses are valued at around £1million.
this one houseowner likes to decorate their house rather madly. the photos don’t really do it justice. it’s truely mad. completely.
and most of all, it’s simply not british.

kezia loves the plastic santa. so much so that it has now become one of her inner circle of favourite toys. she calls it christmas (kind of in a cute way). here she is asleep with her little baby and christmas.

day forteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a christmas tree.

here are today’s photos:
my guitar draped with coloured wires making it look like a christmas tree (thanks to esther the roadie for the wire draping)

broccoli – which everyone knows are just tiny trees (thanks to Tony Big-Eye for cooking these)

our home christmas tree which is as bad as it looks on the photo in real life. we’ll put up our proper one next week, but for now this mini-monstrosity is enough to keep me and the children happy

inside the church christmas tree (i put my camera in to the foliage and hoped for the best)

day thirteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a cracker.

a tricky one today. if you say someone is ‘crackers’ in english it means you think they (or the idea they’ve just had) is completely mad.
we watched Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory this afternoon and that is completely crackers. Especially the Oompa Loompas.
here are the oompa loompas doing a little dance

and here are the final pictures of the day:
esther’s home made cracker from her pre-school and an egg which fell on the floor (2 unrelated activities):

we finally have our own nativity
here is kezia playing with it:

she appears in this photo (in the same way as santa in this photo):

click for big version

day twelve of the advent calendar picture challenge – from the shape of the plastic thing we can just about tell it was a christmas present. again, someone had stolen it before i got there …

and here is the photo of a present:

these are my presents to my colleagues which i shall allow them to eat when i have my grand office opening at 4pm today. (i’ve catered for 6, which allows for a bag of crisps, a fruit drink and two clementines each. the red bull is for an emergency)

it’s a day or so late, but here is a nativity picture i took at church this evening. can you spot my little friend hiding in the picture ? click on the photo to see a big version to see if you are right !

click for big version

day eleven of the advent calendar picture challenge – from the shape of the plastic thing we can just about tell it was wise man.
unfortunately someone stole the chocolate before i opened the door, so no chocolate picture today. unfortunately it’s you the reader who loses out as a result of this jape (i’m not too bothered myself as the chocolate in the calendar doesn’t taste too great !)

so, here are my wise men photos from today:
firstly, wise men from the church nativity set. they do a really funny thing in our church as the wise men slowly move round the church in the weeks up to christmas so they arrive at the stable just after Christmas. it must really freak out the kids, but i like to think of what the journey must be like for those little wise men. what an adventure they have !

it’s also great that the guy at the front is kneeling down, so in fact he’s shuffling along to meet the new born king.
We were at church this evening for a music practice for our Carol Service on Sunday night. Playing guitar is a chap called Mark. he’s a doctor which means he was the wisest man there (i checked with the other blokes and they were in agreement, so hopefully i didn’t upset anyone else).
just because he’s a doctor doesn’t make him wise of course. to prove his wisdom, he’s standing in front of the 10 commandments playing a fender guitar through a marshall amp. you can’t get wiser than that (unless you prefer gibsons).

day ten of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s father christmas aka santa claus aka saint nic.

and here are some more photos from last january when i had my plastic santa in london in the snow:


the bottom right hand photo is me with the santa outside the entrance to Downing Street. the sign says ‘passes must be shown’.
i interpreted the sign as ‘santas must be shown’ and therefore was refused entry to this particular government building
here is a santa in the window of hamley’s this morning. it’s made out of funny plastic bits which aren’t lego (the photos are a bit duff because of the reflection in the window):

day nine of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a nativity scene

[would you allow me to put this photo for this on hold until saturday ? only, my mum is going to provide us with a lovely nativity when we visit her in her Christmas grotto (you’ll see what i mean in due course)] ?
update: here is a photo of our church nativity with a mysterious visitor

day eight of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a snowman
here are the photos. i took these last january when a massive snow cloud plopped its content on london. i was meeting a friend over in westminster and got these photos. the one on the left is a snow man in traffalgar square and the one on the right is a couple of snow-men wearing massive snow ball hats (which must have been incredibly heavy!)

i REALLY tried hard to find a snow man today but failed hence the old photos above

day seven of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a festive dog

so, here are the pictures:
here is esther’s toy dog, recently adopted by kezia. i’ve put it in our plastic green teapot for comedy effect

and here is a robot dog i bought for 50pence outside a shop in Brick Lane, London. it was very cheap as it only has three legs. we’ve had much more fun attaching clothes pegs and small wheels to the third leg than we ever would have had if it had its full compliment of legs. buy broken stuff is my motto. (how our friends look forward to their christmas presents from me)

i was going to take a picture of a teeny weeny small plastic dog i used to play with as a kid with brother edd, and now esther and kezia play with it, but it was sadly not in the places i expected it to be in. if it turns up i’ll let you know !

day six of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a star

here are my photos (from our henley trip)
the lift button in henley rowing museum and a broken fairy want with star on the floor at henley train station:

and here is Jeremy Paxman with his kids. He’s a star of BBC TV and radio.