Christmas

Hey, hooray - Xmas has come and gone, hooray!!!!

I get so very stressed about Christmas. Bloody Christmas. It is almost 20 years (maybe it IS 20 years...) since I had all my boys together for Christmas and I miss them more at this time of the year than any other.
Almost...

Xmas Newstead 2010.
Mark that in your diaries my boys cos it is all happening here next year. And I mean ALL!!!!

The Sweetheart and I had a wonderful time at Mitta. There are a mountain of photos somewhere. Shall tell you where tomorrow...

But here are a couple of lovely things I got.

My brother and SIL at Mitta always get me something wonderful from the Op Shop for pressies. I was *almost* disappointed to unwrap something that was shop bought. Look at this gorgeous little sewing machine that is really a clock. The hand wheel turns around, and the little pedal moves too. It is beautiful.

When I was born I got a Bunny Plate. And then it was handed down to my five siblings to use, and I got it back for all my boys. After they had it, one of them had a baby and he had it for his child.
It was pretty battered, and had most of the Santa Bunny scraped off with generations of us eating from it.
And then the grandchild turned out not to belong to my son, and the boy lost a dad, and a great granny and grandparents and lots of aunties and uncles and cousins, and the mother also lost my Bunny Plate along her sad road. It was all very sad, and I often wonder where that poor kid is now. And if the mother bothered to go to the bloke who was really his father and explain that a whole other family had thought he belonged to them for years.



The story is that long ago (before WW2) the designer at Royal Doulton got the sack.
In a nasty way.
However, the Head Bunny gave him a week to get his work finished before he was slung out into the nasty fox world.
And in that time Designer Bunny redesigned the logo that goes on the back of all the Bunny Plates.
And he did the story of what happened to him.
One Bunny being shafted by another Bunny who is being helped by a lesser Bunny...
I don't know if this is true but it really does look like one Bunny is rooting another Bunny. And it is on all the Bunny crockery...
(It is a bit like that Smellie of mine being screwed for all sorts of child support for years and then all she had to say was "Oh - it must have been one of the others then"...).





My next sister down remembered that I didn't have my Bunny Plate any more.
And she found this for me.
I had a little cry when I unwrapped it. What a lovely present.
It is a very special replacement plate.
And when Moo comes to visit she can eat her porridge from it just like all her great aunties and uncles and her uncles on this side of the family!!!

(It is even better than my Bunny Plate was cos you can SEE the picture...).






And it was still 35* C at 6.30 when I was taking those photos.

The gorgeous flowering thing by the front door that smells delicious at night has grown buds and begun to flower whilst I was off being a Christmas Fairy. Too hot to try to remember what it is called. Everyone will know.
It is gorgeous - covered in budded sprays. I wish I had a screen door so I could leave the front door open at night and let the smell in but not the mossies or the snakes (I have yet to have one in here, but that is only a matter of time. Or knowledge. Might be a cunning one living here all the time for all I know).