Diary catch up #8: December and our first festive season at Windy Acre!

You know how I said now that the weather is turning, all outdoor house-related jobs were ended? It seems that wasn't true...

The front porch roof sprang a leak!!!

Not at all what you want at the BEGINNING of winter.  And to be ignored at our peril.  There was nothing for it but to get the ladders out again and take advantage of a usefully dry and sunny Sunday afternoon to lift of some of the roof tiles and have a look.

This is what we found:

Well, that's not exactly the truth.  This is what it looked like after the Engineer had brushed away the masses of accumulated debris of leaf litter and twigs that had gathered along the battens.  I think the bitumen felt had been more intact before he did that - but with the simple pressure of his hand it just disappeared into bits!

I knew I had been right to remove the wisteria from that corner, I had seen it clambering under the gutter and into the roof during the summer. I suspect it had started to make it's way carefully through the dissolving felt, as truly only the insidious stems of wisteria can...and a lot of the debris was definitely the dead leaves and stems from that.  But there was lots more - either the wind had really been pushing leaves under the tiles and then they had got stuck around the wisteria stems, or a little feathered culprit had perhaps been 'assisting' the accumulations.

But I imagine it was my impatient tugging from below of the wisteria to get it out of the roof that did the final damage and created a hole through which the rain could then trickle - as it is about a month since I removed the wisteria, and we've only really had proper rain in the last few weeks.

I'm shocked at the state of the felt though - it is terribly brittle, and this roof is one of the 'newer' ones, done in the mid 1990s.  I do hope this doesn't mean that all the 1990s re-roofed sections are this bad.

So, as the daylight trickled (too quickly) away, the Engineer cobbled together a temporary fix by removing the batten, putting on a more rigid piece of the plastic floor protection stuff we use for multiple purposes (in order to stop the felt sagging any more over the top of the cavity wall) and then patched on some new felt that had been left behind after the bathroom roof was done.  New batten on the top - and all done!  Not quite...it then took us a further hour of swearing and jiggery pokery to get the tiles to sit back properly under the lead. This roofing lark is not as easy as the builders make it look, you know.

Hopefully this should see us through the winter, and then a 'proper repair' can be added to the growing list of next year's jobs...

After that, I needed cheering up so turned my attention to creating our Special Christmas Cards - the few I make for immediate family, I like to use one of my own paintings for.  Last year it was my Brambly Hedge inspired version of our big kitchen inglenook corner at the old house, complete with comfy fireside chair and glimpse of the table with suitably festive fayre.  I haven't done any pictures of this house yet (too tired and lacking inspiration until we've made it more 'ours'), so I chose one I'd done in painting class of a winter village:

My 'Winter Village' for the Christmas cards this year - I think it captures the mood of this year for us quite well.  Slightly mournful, but the chaos of the mud and snow covered road leads on to the promise of a shelter where you can hunker down against the elements, and 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' !

That job always feels to me like the real start of the festive period, and once done, I'm raring to go on the decorations.

I was VERY well behaved. I promise.  Even though there are more mantlepieces here to decorate...lots of beams that need stuff hanging from them...and many more deep windowsills that are yearning for magazine inspired festive beautification.  I didn't buy any new decorations.  I forced myself not to - I said we would make do with what we had this year, as who knows what new decorations might be essential once the renovations and building work are (eventually) finished?  Evie did a roaring trade in gorgeous red and white twisted paper stardrops, working all by herself following the instructions in one of the many Christmas magazines that had found their way into my trolley.

Alright, I did buy some more fairy lights.  Two more sets actually, I confess.  But I left it until the last week before Christmas and the supermarket were 'selling off' their Christmas decorations half price! Madness - we hadn't even passed the Big Day yet and they were clearing the shelves - no doubt ready for the Valentine's Day stock...

But I found the extra lights essential, as the daylight weakenend every day, the small deep windows let in less and less light and the interior, especially in the daytime, looked sadder, shabbier and gloomier.  We needed twinkling lights and swags of greenery!!!

The lounge inglenook proved the most troublesome - no mantleshelf to hang the decorations from!  A begging request had to be made in triplicate to the Engineer for some nails to be put in the beam.  He wasn't happy, but it was essential.  The old artificial garland that had served so well over the mantle of the old lounge chimney was a bit short for this one, so I added extensions of ivy twined around the light cables to hide them.

Our twiggy star, which makes it feel properly Christmas

Outside, I knew I would miss the old open porch and it's ideal support of the dressing of the front door. What to do here?

I knew I would be working on giving the big lilac bushes a hard renovating prune over the coming months. So I decided they wouldn't mind me stealing a few big branches early, and I jammed them into the wooden planters to create a woodland fairy-realm style natural porch, which was quite strong enough to support the lights on their wires.  Fortunately (!) there are plenty of gaps around the door (even with draught excluder stuck on) through which I was able to feed the power cable...

A bit dainty perhaps, but it did the job.

Our Woodland Fairy style Christmas porch

Joy of joys! To be able to use holly and cypress from our own garden to make a wreath for the door!  I'll admit, I was far more excited about this than a grown woman should be.  It just underlines what I've suspected all along - I evidently haven't grown up yet - that explains why I haven't decided what I will be when I do...

I was very happy with my homemade homegrown wreath! I made me smile every time I went through the door  even if anyone trying to use the door knocker got a nasty stab in the hand

I cooked Christmas dinner myself for the first ever time.  No photos of that - I was so exhausted I doubt I could have held the camera steady... But it tasted fine! I didn't poison anyone!

Still wobbly from my Christmas cooking exertions, we headed north to Sheffield on Boxing Day, in time for my sister's birthday celebrations.  It turns out we were very lucky with the weather on our journey - dry, cloudy, but no traffic issues.

Two hours after we arrived safely, it did this:

...and the city ground to a painful halt.  My sister and her family left early from mum and dad's to try to get home across the other side of town.

Three hours later, at 11.50pm, they arrived back with us, having only managed to get a mile along the first dual carriageway.  They made the sensible decision to turn around at the first roundabout instead of going on and risking a cold night stranded in the car (as it turns out many people did that night).  But we did have fun squeezing 10 people to sleep in a 2 bedroom bungalow that can sleep 6 at a push...! Fortunately the Boy Scout Engineer never allows us to leave home without a duvet and blankets in the back of the van, and the sofa bed in the lounge has an extra 'topper' which we were able to put down on the floor and the children slept on that, just like camping... We kept the heating on through the night so that we wouldn't feel the thinner blankets and the floor.

Even the next day it still took them hours to get home - many of the roads couldn't be cleared by the snow ploughs as the abandoned cars were blocking them.

But one person at least was really happy:

Snowman 1 - in the front garden

Snowman 2 - in the back garden

Hilarious really.  I had had to put to bed a sobbing (overtired and overexcited) small boy on Christmas Eve because it wasn't snowing.  I had had to explain to him that snow at Christmas was actually not that common.  Just because there was always snow on Christmas cards, and in films, didn't mean that here where we lived it was normal... We are more likely to have snow in February than December.  Just because by some fluke of nature 4 out of the 6 Christmasses he can actually remember did have snow - didn't help me in this mission.

Then we drive to Sheffield and it does this!  What can a mummy do?

Bracing snowy walk in Sheffield - amazing how quiet it is without the background noise of the traffic