Fast forward from week 47 to week 52. I feel like I should try harder in 2023 to keep up with these weekly updates. But we shall see, juggling jobs keeps me on my toes and doesn’t leave much time for anything else. It’s been nice to have a week’s holiday, but I worry it will be hard to motivate myself back to it all when I have been so leisurely. Big chunks of my day spent in my Haribo pyjamas binge watching TV and eating ALL the food! You just have to love the Christmas break.

Christmas Dinner

We had a lovely Christmas dinner cooked by my brother. He does an incredible job. You can really tell he used to work in catering. I was on dishes duty that suited me just fine. I have never had much talent in the kitchen!

My mum made some lovely trifles for dessert.

COVID Again!

In the run up to Christmas I had my second helping of COVID. I was quite poorly with three days of non-stop fevers. I am not sure, but I think it felt worse than the first time round. Having had all the jabs apart from the last one perhaps I didn’t have as much protection anymore. I had COVID over my birthday. But when I came back to work my boss had kindly left a balloon, a muffin, card and present for me which really made me smile!

Christmas Market

Luckily, I managed to squeeze in our annual trip to Manchester for the Christmas markets before coming down with COVID.

What a pair of silly sausages we are!

It was lovely to see Sim, but I think we were all brewing germs! I might have to put an end to travelling at that time of year and see her in Spring instead. The previous year when we visited, I was battling a chest infection, so winter might be best spent at home. I don’t seem to have much luck at that time of year health wise.

Meet The Gonks

My hubbie bought me this fab family of gonks from Costco. It’s nice to have a new decoration we can bring out each year now and they are very sweet. Although Bella did take one off the windowsill and try and have it as a dog toy… fortunately we rescued it in time! He just had a ruffled up beard!

Christmas Catch Up

It was nice to catch up with the girls (and their partners) for a meal before Christmas. It was unfortunate my hubbie missed it as he was still unwell. He had tested clear for COVID on the sixth day so was good to be released back into the general population! However, it had left him with a sinus infection and feeling exhausted. I was on the mocktails as I was just finishing my course of steroids, but I still enjoyed the company even without alcohol thrown into the mix.

Driving

I have been spending a lot of time on the road, so I quite enjoyed getting involved in this Kia campaign about my driving playlist. Music certainly takes the edge off the drive home. I had to drive through a stretch that was –6.5 so I feel I am having a good experience learning to drive in different conditions.

Air Fryer

We finally managed to get an air fryer. It is much cheaper than having the oven running for so long. Since we had our Smart Meter, we have got a tiny bit obsessed with our electricity usage! So now we are trying any trick we can to save money. We even attempted the canned potatoes roasted in the air fryer and they turned out well. We sprinkled them with the Roast Potato Seasoning from Morrisons, so simple straight from the can, hardly any mess or preparation involved.

New Boiler

Still keeping on the topic of saving money we have also had a new boiler installed. We are now getting double the heating out of the same quantity of oil! Which is quite the result! I kind of wish we had done it sooner now.

Walk

We have had a couple of short walks and during one of those I found this lovely Christmas painted rock. Although I need to get much more active in the New Year if I have any hope of burning off ALL the Christmas calories…