All Things December

Where I live, December means winter, snow, Christmas cookies, cards, presents, woolly hats, scarves and gloves, family gatherings and a lot more.

Cookies, cookies, cookies!!! These were made by my Mum and by a family friend of ours. The ones in the bag from my Mum were all gone within two or three evenings, and the contents of the tin have been greatly reduced already :-)

My Mum made this woolly hat for me! I wanted it to be grey and yellow, to go with my grey winter coat, and yellow being my favourite colour. She made a matching scarf, too. If you want one, you can have a look at her Etsy shop (the link is to the left of my blog).

The contents of the parcel I was getting ready to send to my relatives in Yorkshire. It should be there by now.

I've already received some presents from England, but of course they will sit there unopened until Christmas Day.

While winter will always remain my least favourite season (for the very simple reason that I detest the cold and find it quite hard to keep warm most of the time), all the Christmassy things help to reconcile me with it - at least for the first part of it.
When Christmas and New Year are gone and winter shows no sign of retreating but instead drags out well into March, sometimes even April, that is when I suffer most, and I dare say I am not alone in that.

So far, I can not complain - we've had several days of temperatures as low as -10C (14F) during the night and -7C during the day, but on Thursday evening, in the space of only a few hours, there was a quick rise of almost 10 degrees, which resulted in a dangerous sheet of quick ice (in German, we call this phenomenon Blitzeis) on the roads and pavements.

RJ and I had been meeting up with his parents for a pre-Christmas dinner in town, and on our way back to the car, we - as everybody else - could walk only very slowly and carefully.

Last night, I worked at the Christmas market again with my friend; drizzling rain meant less visitors to the market than what would have been good for business, but the hours until official closing time at 9.00 pm went by quickly nonetheless - we see each other maybe twice a year, in spite of living less than a mile apart, and had lots to talk about. Last year, I wrote about this annual event here, and you can see a picture of our stall there.

December 7th, early afternoon

December 7th, about two hours later

December 8th, around 8.00 in the morning

December 8th, two hours later

December 8th, lunch time

The drizzle also meant that by now, all the snow is gone. It looked beautiful while it lasted, and there is still enough time for it to come back - but for the next few days, I am glad to get a break from the below-zero-cold and enjoy the comparatively mild weather.

A happy 3rd Advent Sunday to all of you!

PS: Several of you have mentioned the Sandy Hook shooting on your blogs. Had it not been for you, I wouldn't have known about it, as I have not been watching the news for a few nights in a row. It is very sad, a real tragedy, and all I can say is that I can not even begin to imagine how hard it must be for those families who have lost their little ones in it. Their Christmas will be anything but merry.