The Ice Palace

And more Christmas shopping photos - I was actually quite fascinated by all the decorations and variations and efforts made by the shop to draw people in and make shopping irresistible... One of my favourite features was the Ice Palace - an amazing glittering grotto of blue and white set up between the more traditional displays. The sparkle was difficult to ignore and we spent quite some time browsing around the fake snowy trees and the stacks of snowman soft toys...

Credits: based on qp by Dumpty (from Selena's "Silent Night" kit); snow flakes by Free Digital Scrapbooking; Ice Alphas by Lauren Bavin

Credits: based on qp by Silke (from Selena's "Silent Night" kit); Ice Alphas by Lauren Bavin

Credits: based on qp by Linda (from Selena's "Silent Night" kit); Ice Alphas by Lauren Bavin;
fibre by Jennifer Riggins; bauble template by Jess Bolton

Santa is coming to town...

Here are some more photos from our Christmas shopping excursion to Notcutts. The Santas were all part of the traditional display as well as the main feature of the Scandinavian section whereas the Father Christmas with Rudolph could be found inside a forest of fake Christmas trees at the centre of the whole Christmas display. Goes to show how huge this whole section was (or is)!

Credits: based on quickpage from Tina Williams, with a Santa's hat from Robin Gough.

Credits: based on quickpage from Val J.

Christmas Shopping

I finally had to admit that I could ignore Christmas approaching no longer (this was some time in November!). I had been moaning about the early Christmas displays in shops (no kidding, the first one I saw was at the end of August!) for weeks, or even months, but with the general hectic and being ill in November I then completely "forgot" to develop any sort of Christmas mood at all. I still haven't! It also wasn't until my friend dragged me out for some Christmas shopping at about the mid of November that I realised that it had indeed become time to think about presents and cards. I made a sluggish start on the latter and have to admit that any overseas ones will probably be late this year, but thanks to Eve at least I'm in good time on the presents front.
Just like every year, I was amazed by the extent of the Christmas displays and selections in some of the big shops over here, and thought that over the next days I could share some of the things I saw... Let's start with Notcutts, a big garden centre, where Eve and I did our first bit of shopping. They conveniently had put on a "Thursday Night Shopping" event at exactly the day we wanted to go. We enjoyed some delicious and enormous baked potatoes in their restaurant first (the food was great although the one-man-band they'd put on for that night was a bit of a nuisance) and then wandered through their various sections of Christmas decorations, delicacies and general gifts. This was more a feast for the eye as the prices were offputting... Here's the first instalment of piccies, taken in the traditional decorations section.

Credits: based on qp by Valinda J; tag by Alice Naylor

Credits: based on template by Amy Watson; kit by Sara Carling (this was a charity kit - do have a look on the site)

Oops, the roof is gone...

And here's another result of the recent weather - the high winds took off part of the roof of our garden shed! Lucky that Sean is so good at fixing things - it was a nuisance, but not a major problem... (And by the way, you can see the window of my crafts-room-cum-study in the top photo - it's the left one above the shed!)

Credits: digikit "Interior Design" by Club Scrap

The Mega Puddle

Back to the weather topic... After the wonderful autumn we had this year, the English winter weather finally struck with loads of high winds and rains of every variety. We had gales howling around our house for several nights, flood warnings and giant puddles in the road where we live. My husband, however, is happy: the paddling is good in the weirs now - Shepperton was on ten gates last week!

Credits: template by Sonia Harvy; digi kit Grafik by Patricia Eschenbrenner