Celebrating Yule 2011 - Part 2 (FD)

Thursday December 22nd arrived, and it was time for us to start our second full day of holiday celebrations! :)

We exchanged another present; I had an audiobook from Kelly (review and information to come in a later post) and more glitter stuff from Kero.

Then we started having fun with crafts. We wanted to make at least one holiday decoration. In my case this was a couple of glittery baubles:





I used the gold glitter paint I'd had from Kero that morning as the main colour, then decorated one of them with some glitter glue too; only I did it lightly so you only get the hint of the colours. I used amathyst, ruby and aquamarine, but I'm not sure if you can tell from the photos above.

Kelly made some sledding penguins. Well, started to; they're really fiddly, so they weren't done by the time I sent these photos to Iggy to be sorted, and I haven't had a chance to have him sort the photos yet. I'll post photos when I can though.

We finally got to our roast chestnuts after that; turns out Kero likes chestnuts too!

Anyway, that evening I did a meditation I'd planned to do. Well, sort of.

My plan was to take my quartz thumb crystal (which I hold when meditating)...


...Then meditate about the old year, and the new one.

In the back of my mind though was something I'd heard a lot of people saying about recently; a word for the coming year. I had heard someone mention it last year, but this year several people had. Enough, it seems, to have it firmly planted as a suggestion for me in my own mind. I tried several times to stop myself thinking about the word for the coming year - since that wasn't what I planned to meditate on - but my mind kept coming back to it. In the end I got the hint and decided to go with it; if my mind was that determined to pick the word (and it was the same word each time) then what else could I do?

So, I have a word for the coming year... Hope!

Anyway... It was a little after eight in the evening, I was done meditating and had just gone back in to the bedroom to listen to my new audiobook when the doorbell went. Who could it be? I was in my PJs (I usually am by that time if I have no reason not to be) so Kelly answered it. He was in PJs too, but that's not as bad for a man. Sorry, but it isn't.

When he opened the door, someone shouted, "come carol with us!" and disappeared in to the night before he could say or do anything. I wish they'd hung about; if they had then I'd have liked to go with them, but though he saw which way they went, by the time we could have thrown some clothes on and been ready to go they'd have been long gone. If he'd stuck around I'd have asked him to wait a minute and we'd join them, but he just didn't give us time. He seemed to think we'd be ready to drop everything and follow him. I wish we could have! I told Kelly I'd like to find out next year if someone will be doing that again, and if so be ready to follow them. He seems to like the idea too, so hopefully we can find out if or when they'll be doing it and join in next year.

OK, moving on...

On the 23rd we planned to be doing some gaming, but instead ended up doing more work on our craft projects, since we had to keep doing a bit then letting it dry and so on. Plus, we'd planned to do a bit of roleplaying, but my laptop decided it wasn't having any of it; I managed to catch up with blogs, but when we were about to try and do the roleplaying session (which I needed my laptop for since my character sheet and GMA Dice are on it)... Well, the laptop just refused to start. By the time I got it working again it was too late to be playing really.

My presents that day were more glitter stuff and a small pair of craft scissors from Kero, and some candle making supplies from Kelly to bulk up the starter kit I got myself for my planned attempts at candle making; I'm thinking I'll try it on Imbolc (February 2nd, for those who don't know) since that's a good time for candle making.

And I spent the evening reading a book called "A Treasury Of Christmas Tales" which has short versions of stories like "The Little Match Girl" and "A Christmas Carol" and "The Nutcracker" in it, as well as a few cute little Christmas stories I hadn't heard of before like "The Christmas Bear" and "The Wishing Star"... I love the book so much I got my brother a copy so he could read it each year too, if he wants to.