Festive photos & why I've got a small forest

Hello all.

Thanks to my new readers for jumping aboard - hope to get to know you soon!

I've *almost* finished decorating my Christmas trees. After trying to decorate our big 5 foot tree over a few days last week and finding it too painful, I went to Plan B. A lot has changed over the last 5 years since I've had Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but sometimes the most mundane losses upset me the most. My arms and shoulders are one of the most painful areas of my body because of Fibro so I'm used to having to squeeze out toothpaste with two hands and other silly things. But not being able to decorate the soddin' Christmas tree?! That pissed me off for a while until I realised we could have a small multicoloured forest instead. Win!

We'd already bought a 3ft hot pink tree from Tesco a couple of weeks ago, just because it's pink and sometimes I'm a girlie girl. Then we picked up an uber sparkly silver tinsel tree from Argos for £9.99 last week. It's supposed to be 3 ft tall but it's more like 4 ft. It was half price and came with lights, baubles and a tree topper. We also bought a 3ft black tree from Tesco which came a couple of days ago, so we have a 4 ft silver tinsel tree, a 3 ft pink tree, a 3 ft black tree, a 2 ft pink tinsel tree and a 1 ft white tinsel tree. They're all really light so I can manoeuvre them and decorate them easily. Our old tree was ridiculously heavy and was a bit pissed, so it stood like the leaning tower of Pisa. We left it outside on Saturday with a sign saying 'Please take.' It was gone a couple of hours later and I hope someone less fortunate picked it up. I just need to buy one more set of lights tomorrow for my black mini tree and then I *think* I'll be done. I'll take pics of everything when it's all finished tomorrow.

Here are a few photos from a nearby village called Westfield. We went there on Saturday night. It's only a tiny blip of a village - blink and you'll miss it - but several houses go all out with their Christmas decorations.


After we finished looking at the lights we went round to Rach's parents house nearby to thaw out with delicious homemade soup and bread rolls. Nom.

Here's an arty shot of our Christmas lights, taken on a long exposure while moving the camera around in circles.


Thanks for reading!