Label me HAPPY!

My wish came true - and I haven't even started knitting the mittens of destiny!

Deep, beautiful, blanketing, and at least initially, white, snow. There's a road in that picture somewhere.

The only mark on the otherwise pristine fluffy blanket was a little trail of prints running across the lawn:



Given that it was about 12cm deep at this point I'm guessing that puss was up to his elbows at least and probably not enjoying it half as much as we did. Monday's snow day came about because while I could get to the trains, the trains couldn't get me to work. This snow day I have no idea whether the trains ran well or not because a quick tramp around the village first thing in the morning showed that our road wasn't gritted, the main village road (a hill) wasn't gritted and the main road to the train station wasn't gritted - I worked from home.

Our garden, which always looks a little shabby over the winter, was made beautiful by the snow:


Each holly leaf looks like it has been individually topped with a meringue.



Anyone for a rosemary scented freeze pop?



This, looking for all the world like a woolly pine cone is in fact our Christmas tree - still waiting to be cut up for the recycling bin.

I also got a great parcel to play with this week:


I'd been deliberating about having some personalised labels made for a while, usually every time I give things away with detailed washing instructions written inside the card and think how much nicer it would be to just pin or sew a label on! These are made by the famous Cash's name tapes, responsible for school name tapes across the nation (my calculator still has a school name tape stuck on the front of it to the great entertainment of my colleagues who know how long ago I left school).

I went with cream coloured labels (to make a marked difference from the school labels) and avoided black (my school tape colour) or red (my sister's). So now I have blue:



For handwash only. And green:


For machine washable. I'm really pleased with how they turned out - the inaugural blue label was pinned to my father's birthday socks but don't worry Mum, I didn't have them made just for you!