I basically inhaled my dinner so began taking photos from my table seat to occupy myself as I waited for everyone else to eat up. I bloody love Christmas dinner!










I really liked Chummy's gingerbread house, I wanted to eat it but it looked too pretty, so instead I took photos of her masterpiece.


I also liked Katie's Rudolph slippers, couldn't pass up a quick snap of those as a small pile of wrapping paper began to pile up at her feet.


They also have a new kitten called Willow who is the cutest little bouncy ball of  fur, and a bit more social than the older cats so she was star of the show...


As much as I love their cats, who I occasionally look after when they're away so I like them more than other cats, I am rather allergic, and dad snapped this lovely shot of me breathing through my inhaler (it helps when I'm short of breath), hair bedraggled  after whipping off the VR goggle-things.







After we all had a turn experiencing a rollercoaster ride from the sofa I asked if they had any post it notes for the typical Christmas guessing game, where an interesting range of famous names came to play...




I hope you all had a lovely Christmas spending time with family and friends, and if you had a delicious dinner and some goodies under the tree all the better. Do share your fun Christmas tales and cherish they joy rather than the more boring and disappointing moments of the day ;)

• Scissors
• Tape
• Brown paper labels
• Glitter markers
• Ribbons and bows
• Wrapping paper

When getting a couple arty supplies for my brother, I spotted some glittery tape, which of course I had to get to spice things up a bit! Admittedly though I kept forgetting about the glitter tape while wrapping but I made sure to use it on my chummy's gift, as I know she has a glitter problem ;)


As there is still a few hours to go until Christmas and the great gift exchange, I haven't included what exactly I have bought for people and how to wrap such awkwardly shaped object or boxes, but one crucial tip for gift wrapping is to remove the price tags! I stuck mine onto a piece of tissue I was using to wipe one of my markers onto as it was leaking a little.


Here is my collection of gifts by the fireplace as we haven't put up any decorations as I write this as our household has become aggressively un-festive but I tried to use the cosiness of the fireplace and some fairy lights to make up for the lack of the bottom of a tree. If you miss a bit of green, here is last year's Christmas post for you :)


Yes, you are allowed to start singing "brown paper packages tied up with string"... I kept it very simple with this gift by tying a simple string bow, which I hadn't done before but decided to see how it looked with this small package and I quite like it.


Usually I would use ribbon to tie gifts, making the loops of the bow as long as the ends to cut them, leaving six ends of ribbon which I curl to make big, bouncy curly "bow" on the gift. Doing these always make me think of Will Ferrel's Elf, where Zooey Deschanel's character is told to make "6 inch ribbon curls honey."

Last year I bought a little something for all of my friends, leaving me with a bag full of brown packages with red ribbons or bows, with the names in green and I loved it because it was oh so festive and glorious, but this year we did secret Santa, leaving me with fewer gifts but an opportunity to get a bit more creative and try out other things to do with all my brown wrapped gifts.


I kept most of my gifts pretty simple, using different coloured bows and ribbons, I thought the simplicity of it made it beautiful and sweet, keeping the traditionally festive colour scheme. And as you can see here, beginning to get a little creative with tape.


This is one of the more oddly shaped items, I tend to wrap things like this - including bottles of booze - like a Christmas cracker, or rather half a cracker. First tightly wrapping the bottom of the object to fit the shape of it, I twisted the top and taped round it, masking the mass of tape with a tag to write the name on and make it look a little more presentable, hiding the more messier wrapping.


For these next two gifts I got a little more creative with ribbons I kept from presents given to me, probably a weird habit but it goes straight into my box of gift wrapping materials to use next year as it's perfectly reusable. For this larger box I wrapped two different red ribbons taping it into position at the back and polishing it off with a bow.


A much smaller box had a similar treatment, with the ribbon tied in the typical cross shape, tying the ribbon together at the back and covering the cross over of the ribbon with a bow.

I hope this has inspired you for some last minute gift wrapping or even to save for next year. I also hope you enjoy the pictures I had some fun taking them - as well as wrapping of course.

Bonjour good people I hope you are well. I know this should be the first of a few festive posts but not only do I have one last instalment of Paris photos to share with you but I'm also aggressively unfestive. I still have my Christmas shopping to do and decorate the house - but when I do I will have a last minutes Christmas blog next week for all you festive elves.


Now that you've seen Paris by day, the sun shall set and I have a few images of night time Paris, which was truly beautiful. Before going, I didn't know it was officially nicknamed the "city of lights" but it was very evident why as the city seemed to sparkle at night - quite literally in terms of the Eiffel Tower which actually had twinkling lights every night. Anyway, lets get to it and see all the loveliness of nighttime Paris...


The first night the three of us decided to venture onto the metro and see the Arc de Triomphe, which towered over us and we spent some time photographing it. I took to experimenting with angles and shutter speeds...


The street lights were very detailed and I experimented with it in the foreground using my cameras built in flash.


I like this shot because you can see the Arc, Eiffel Tower (which we concluded wasn't that far away and proceeded to walk to it) and the Moon, an image I first though had no composition but on reflection i think it shows the golden spiral so it's not to shabby after all.


I had taken all my lenses and decided I ought to use all of them at some point to make use of all the weight I was carrying each day, so I put on my telephoto lens to capture the detail of the Arc. I wish I had used this lens again when up Le Tower but it was simply just too cold and my fingers were beginning to turn numb.



I quite like this shot as it makes the Arc look very large with dramatic lighting from below.



I liked this building because of it's grand-ness and fancy gates, I later spotted a sign that said it was home to Abercrombie and Fitch, fancy!


I'm such a sucker for slow shutter speed photos. I stood here and waited for the lights to go green and the vehicles went into action so I could get this busy shot. The lights in the trees twinkled beautifully and you can see in the background the Eiffel Tower we were slowly slowly making our way to.


Over the road I found Brandon Woelfel's home (if you know you know) with fairy lights smothering the outer fence and bokeh everywhere, I couldn't not capture it!


This was in the restaurant we all went to as a full group, it was a very atmospheric place but they didn't half take their time to serve their expensive food...


There is definitely no reason in particular that I photographed this hotel on the way back from the restaurant... Absolutely not...



The candles at Notre Dame, which we all stopped and took a little moment to light one each, I practically threw my coins at the box to light one for my mom, which I photographed but they didn't come out too well, this is a different cluster of candles.




I don't know what the window reads but I like the soft lights and reflections of this bakery window as we walked past it on the way to yet again, the Eiffel Tower.