Where have the last few days gone?

Christmas this year certainly turned out differently to what we expected. Not only did mum not come over on Christmas Day, but she still didn't feel well enough to venture out on Boxing Day. So in the afternoon we had a taxi over to her so that we could take the presents that were here for her and also some of the Christmas food.

Thursday was quite a functional sort of day - because we had someone coming to do the cleaning (relief for the regular person), it made sense to take down the tree etc in the morning ready for her coming in the afternoon, because next Wednesday we're having new carpets fitted and so won't be cleaned again till next Thursday.

So this really has been a strange Christmas because it's the first time ever that the tree has come down by 27 December! We've still got cards up, but not much else.

Yesterday I had a day of watching craft on QVC (no, I didn't buy anything) and in the afternoon I popped briefly into Bromley (no way I wanted to battle through the sales zone, except I did venture into M & S) to collect an unstamped letter from the Royal Mail sorting office.

And today I've been putting items for sale on ebay (no, not unwanted Christmas presents!) - it's taken me best part of all day, taking photos, descriptions etc.

I'm well aware that this is supposed to be 'My Crafty Outlook', so back to crafting reality. I did make a few cards yesterday - or it might have been the day before - but I won't show those now.

Why oh why didn't I make John's birthday card earlier?!?! Why is it that the important ones are always left till last? It's his birthday tomorrow and I'd been trying to come up with a new idea - the longer we're married the harder it is to come up with something new!

He plays bowls (for a blind bowling team) and enjoys rugby on TV and loves his classical music, but I seem to have exhausted those themes, and, besides, I made a rugby decoupage card for mum to give him. We sometimes play cribbage (we use large print playing cards - and because you only finish up with four cards to play with, it's not too difficult. Anyway, I decided to try to do a card based on this and looked up the maximum score that could be got, which is why the card has the Jack and 3 fives and the other five at the bottom. I was going to put something like 'you are a top scorer' but I wasn't sure that was good wording for a card!

I'm not sure that I'm that happy with it, but at this late stage it will have to do! The background paper is from the Guy's Life collection, which picks up on the cards theme, although not clear on the photo: