A white Christmas week at least

Koos couldn't resist all that pristine snow

Well it's been the coldest December I can remember...ever...which I suppose isn't saying that much bearing in mind that from 1981 - 2001 I lived in a country where I only saw snow once and then had to drive 400kms to find it.

Still, since I've been here, and that's ten years now, this really is the coldest it's been and the evidence is in the photo above. Never have I seen icicles on my barge like these. Never have I seen icicles hanging from the roofs or the sides of cars in this way. It really has been exceptional.

That being said, tomorrow is Christmas day and I don't think it will officially be a white one. We haven't had snow for a couple of days now, and it even thawed quite a bit yesterday, so a good deal of the thicker snow has gone, leaving what is now rather grubby pack ice everywhere - neither pretty nor very comfortable. Still, I'll leave you with this image here of a trailer I saw the other day parked all by itself and almost totally pristine with its covering of snow. I don't mind it when it looks like this.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone. I hope you all have a chance to rest and relax, and that you will be heading into 2011 full of optimism for the next decade of the 21st century....makes it sound rather grand doesn't it? I'd better have a drink to that!

End of the year limbo

And here's the black and white calendar. I like them both so much, I'm getting them both...one for the Vereeniging and one for the little house.

It's strange how the end of the year can make me feel. On the one hand, I like having a few weeks with less work - once the marking is over, that is. On the other, I find I have difficulty in managing my time. I know there are a multitude of things I really want to do, such as writing, finishing my thesis, doing some water colour painting, making a couple of skirts and so on, but my reluctance in getting down to any of them seems to suggest I don't want to do anything at all.

As a salve to my conscience, though, I have made a calendar using my own photos of the past year for my family, and I was pleased to hear that my sister had received hers yesterday. My family have got so used to having a Val calendar now that it's more or less expected, which is fine, because it solves a few of the Christmas gift worries. Having done that, I got to thinking that maybe a calendar would be a good medium for Koos' photos too, so now we have selected just a few of the images he took in Poland on this last trip and have made a calendar of those too. I think they look great, so apart from the usual family requirements, I have made it available on my Lulu.com 'storefront' in the hopes that others might find it appealing too.

Here it is for any of my blog friends who are interested:

I'm intending to make another couple. One will definitely be of his black and white photos, and another probably of Rotterdam. I think calendars are a good idea for promoting someone's art work, and of course it saves me from getting down to all the other things I've been putting off doing! In a very constructive way too, which can't be bad.