Decorations, afternoon tea and a running talk

Last week we put up the Christmas tree and decorations- above are a few of my fave.

I even wore my Home Alone jumper to properly get into the festive spirit!

On Wednesday I got out my other festive leggings and wore them to yoga, as it was the last one of the term. The room we use had lovely fairy lights strung up (as well as the lights in the garden on) so it looked so cosy and inviting. Instead of a normal class, we had a few sequences to work through, as last week we’d asked for some yoga moves to work on during the holidays. After the class, Josie emailed us the moves which had a few warm ups and then a selection of poses (according to what we would feel like we need at that time) and then cool down sequences. It’s so useful and I am going to set a reminder on my calendar so that I do them a few times a week.

On Thursday after work we had afternoon tea at a local hotel with our team. In the entrance hall was the most amazing gingerbread village. The tea was lovely (although we did have a bit of a faff with the bill as at first they hadn’t taken our deposit off, and tried to charge us a higher price). We had a little secret Santa and the person who bought for me must know me so well!

Apparently because he’s wearing green, and a big hat, it’s basically a mini version of me!

It was a bit of a rush as at 7.30 I had to be at a school a mile or so from home, for a talk by Ben Smith (the guy who ran 401 marathons). The afternoon tea was at 4.30 so I thought I would be fine, but I didn’t end up leaving until gone 6.30, and then a 25 min journey was a lot longer due to traffic- I just had time to park the car and visit the bathroom before we were off out (we walked). The talk was organised by a local running club, so when you got there, as well as a mug of mulled wine (included in your ticket price and probably the number 1 reason why Andy agreed to come along- 2 for him!) they had loads of amazing looking home-made cakes for sale. Alas, I was too full from the tea to even contemplate any. The talk was so interesting though- I knew a bit of his background (the headlines really- that he was bullied in school) and I’d heard him on Marathon Talk, but I didn’t know a lot of the background. Well worth a visit if he’s doing a talk near you. The running club were the ones who organised the race that was cancelled last weekend- they had said that they were going to donate the entry fees to charity in memory of a runner who had died, which was a lovely idea.

Last Friday we had Christmas Jumper day at work (although as many people have pointed out to me, every day is Christmas jumper day for me in December….). I wore my Joyeaux Narwhal jumper as it is the most Christmassy (and not a penguin in sight).

I did, however, add to my winter jumper collection- Dorothy Perkins were having a big sale (something % off everything, I forget how much) and I could not resist another penguin jumper (you can never have too many penguin jumpers) and then saw these robin jumpers too. I shall be wearing them in January too, just because. (Also, the package was thrown over our side gate into our back garden because no-one was home- I am hoping that the only reason it got thrown over was because they thought it would be clothes and nothing breakable, but still…)

It was very nice to have a Friday night at home- the last few weeks we’ve been heading off to a Christmas market or something, which of course is good, but it was lovely to know that once I was home, I didn’t need to go anywhere else.

Do you get into the Christmas jumper spirit?  Have you got your decorations up?