New Years Eve already, and I don't know where the last 2 weeks have gone. 

Xmas is great when you have kids in the house, especially when they are enthusiastic children like our boy.  His face is just full of joy with whatever happens to be in each of the brightly packaged gifts secreted all around the house.  Are we the only ones who buy presents, hide them in a panic and then forget completely where you hid them? 

There is only one thing around Christmas that irritates me more, and that is forgetting to pack away that last decoration.  Every year, when we start stripping down the decorations, we try to pack them away in an order that makes sense, and in the same place.  We pack away our tree, and put all the other random shiny seasonal objects around the tree in the box.  Every year, Jage says "is that all of it?", we search again (the same process that we go through when checking out of any hotel), find nothing, and the huge box gets winched, with great threat to life and limb, up to the attic.  Within 24 hours you can guarantee that we find a candlestick, a santa money box, a bauble etc that we have forgotten to pack.  Last year it was a bit of tinsel.  And we haven't bought tinsel for yearrrs, but this one managed to escape the box.  In our defense, 90% of the time, this bit of tinsel was behind the door, so unsurprising that we forgot it.  Anyway, we tried a new tactic with the errant tinsel.  We left it where it was.  So this Christmas we had a head start on the decorating.

If it was up to Sam, we would probably leave the decorations up all year - but there is a new series of both 24 and Lark Rise to Candleford starting next month, and for those, I really do need to see ALL of the telly.

One of the things that we will be doing with Purrnickerty in the New Year is posting to the website the location of stockists of some of our standard prints etc.  We also intend to offer the Purrsonalised names on mugs and other gift items, so watch out for them.

All that is left to say is "Happy New Year" from all of us - and let's hope that 2009 is a good one for all.