Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 49

When we get to week 49 we know the end of the year is fast approaching.

I don't do much baking these days but I felt inspired this week so I made a boiled fruit cake. I used a different recipe from my usual. It is one a friend gave me, and it is delicious. It is rich enough to be a Christmas cake but has nothing to preserve it so I am not sure it would keep that long, so we are enjoying it now!

I am seeing faces again. Can you?

It has been lovely weather this week with days just warm enough, and bright blue skies. But they have forecast a drop of ten degrees after the weekend! However this week we have had several red skies at night, fairly solid colour with no clouds to break it up, but this one just caught my eye because of the three little grey clouds hovering in front of it. They soon broke up and disappeared but they were rather cute. It looked as though someone was sending up smoke signals.

This morning we went down to Garrucha because I had an early dentist appointment. We parked on the sea front and there was more wind than I had realised so it was whipping up some big waves. (Sorry no photo this time). We then went to the post office and posted a parcel of Christmas cards to my sister. She will put English stamps on them and post them on. In case you are wondering why I do it that way, it actually saves me a lot of money. I am a bit late sending them this year, and both Friday and next Monday are bank holidays here. One is a secular holiday (Constituion day), and one is a religious holiday (Immaculate Conception). This means that many shops, schools etc with have a long weekend off, so I wanted to make sure my parcel was posted today.

I have just finished putting up my Christmas decorations and it all looks so nice. I normally do it on the first, but December sort of crept up on me and took me by surprise, and writing cards seemed more important. But it is all done now. I have sorted out one pile of nice decorations that I do not need so they will go down to the charity shop on Saturday if it is opening this week. A lot of older items will be discarded after the holiday but I have many decorations that are part of our family tradition, and I can't part with them.

I may get a few pictures taken by next week. In the meantime, our street lights were switched on tonight. The angel at our gate is gold and white this year.

The ones across our street are very pretty. Aren't they bright colours? You can see there are swaithes of them all the way up the street. I haven't been over to the plaza to see the other ones lit up yet.

As a chnge from red skies, on Monday the sky was covered in little powder-puff clouds. Aren't they pretty?

And they were even prettier when the setting sun caught their edges.

And that is it for today. I will now go down to the warm sitting room to watch TV, and in the morning I will publish this and link up with Annie's Friday Smiles.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 48

Another week has been and gone, and I have very little to write about. But at the weekend I saw our local policeman who helped us so much on the day of the storm, and he asked me whether the telegraph pole was still in our garden. When I said it was he promised to phone up on Monday and ask them to come for it, and sure enough, the next day there was a knock on the door and a man told me he was there for the pole. He had a crane lorry and soon he and his mate had the pole roped up and they carefully lifted it over the front wall, taking great care not to knock against anything. We are glad it has gone. One less thing to think about!

I have been busy with my laser cutter again this week, but first here is the finished bread board that was a work-in-progress when I showed it last week. (apologies to those who have already seen this on Facebook). I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Since then I have also made this cut out Nativity lantern. Agan I used an svg file that I bought off Etsy, and it was supposed to be for 3mm thick wood. I bought some more sheets of birchwood ply from Amazon which was supposed to be 3mm, but I guess it wasn't exact because the tabs on my lantern were too thick for the holes, so I spent one evening using an X-acto knife to shave each tab off a little on each side. It was fiddly but in the end it did go together and it was better, less waste-full, than altering the pattern slightly and cutting it all again. Now it is put together it is quite sturdy.

I like the images on the sides too, especially the little donkey.

Of course it looks even better with a small light inside it. It is supposed to be a battery operated tea light, but I didn't have one of those handy, so for now it has a small coil of tiny LED lights.

I really have nothing else to add this week, but of course I do have a couple of sky pictures that happened to catch my eye this week, so I will close with those and get ready to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning.