I hope you all had a good festive season. We have been pretty quiet here, and I seem to have done a lot of snoozing. I think I'm just catching up on sleep after a long year. 

We spend Christmas day on our own, opening presents with a cup of tea, eating chocolate before (or in my case, instead of) breakfast, then preparing lunch in a leisurely way and eating mid afternoon. This year we sneaked out for a chilly walk in the park with a friend before lunch too. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent knitting while watching Harry Potter. I'm trying to finish a pair of socks for a friend - I've just started the second so clearly they are going to be rather late for Christmas... I'm planning to finish them before I go back to work though - good job all of the Harry Potter films are on the tv this week. 

It's rather chilly here, but I forced myself out for a wintry walk this afternoon. I'll post photos soon but right now I'm off to try to defrost my bones with a hot water bottle. 

It's been pretty chilly round here lately, and last weekend we were poised for a large flurry of snow, but... nothing. 

Well, not quite nothing, but also not the 'several inches' we were threatened with. 

Still, it was nice to walk (or rather slide) around the local park, and see who else had been out walking. 

I do like wandering about in the snow, but it doesn't do to stay out too long in such weather if you have the choice, and we quickly found ourselves in our favourite cafe.

It's been a bit of a week for staying inside, and yesterday we hosted our usual pre-Christmas festive gathering. More of an open house really, with people coming and going throughout the evening and bringing tasty goodies with them. 

I made these (supposedly) unbelievably easy mince pies. What a faff! The recipe boasts that they're so easy because you don't need to roll out the pastry, but I spent far longer squidging and squishing to get it into the tins and they looked rather 'rustic'. Still, they were quite delicious, so all is forgiven. 

They did look slightly better cooked, but somehow they vanished rather quickly and I didn't get a photograph. Not sure how that happened. 

No house news - our buyers' buyer is presumably now going through the same stress we all did we mortgages and surveys, and we're not really expecting to be ready to exchange until mid January at the earliest. In the meantime, we're decking our stacks of boxes with festive trimmings and settling in for a cosy few weeks here before we head out into the middle of nowhere. 

Oh! I should also tell you I'm planning to join in with Frugalwoods' Uber Frugal Month Challenge in January again. You can read about last year's efforts here (although you'll have to scroll past a bit of DIY first - that brought the memories flooding back!) It would be most cheerful if you joined in the challenge too - sign up (for free, of course) here. 

Will you join me for a celebratory cup of tea? Our house-buying adventure is back on, as our buyers found a new buyer for their house yesterday. Hooray! 

Of course, we won't be going anywhere before Christmas now, but that's no bad thing, as it gives us another few weeks to save (and to pack). And it means when we move it will be closer to spring, which is no bad thing, as it's pretty grey and bleak at our new house right now. 

(Well, of course, it's grey and bleak here in the city too, but somehow everything is more muddy and cold out in the countryside, which I suppose we'll get used to...)

This is me at our new house a couple of weeks ago in my fabulous blood-and-acid-proof wellies and my posh frock (I had to go to a work function straight after). As you can see, the neighbour's cows have been stomping around and I'm not sure I'd advise camping in this particular field right now.

I was striding about the fields photographing the ID numbers on the telegraph poles (there's a rumour from the solicitor that we may be able to get £5 a year from BT for giving them access to maintain them, and I'm not going to turn my nose up at free dosh). 

I was surprised how many telegraph poles there were - I'd been convinced there was only one. 

This one, in fact. However, it seems I was wrong, and turning my head in the opposite direction I spied this one. 

Oh! And what's this? 

Turns out that contraption is on our land too. Exciting! 

Now is probably a good time to confess that, until last week, I hadn't fully realised the extent of the land we were buying.  I mean, we have the plan, and we've looked on google maps, and on the Ordnance Survey map of course. But the first time we viewed the house the estate agent was late, and we had an appointment to view another house, so we just went inside and round the outbuildings and looked across the fields but didn't really go into them. 

I'd been back a couple of times since then to walk along the public footpaths, but had forgotten the plan of the land both times. 

This time, wearing wellies and armed with the title plan, I had a good look round. 

It seems we're buying quite a lot of mud. The neighbour's cows have been doing an excellent job of keeping the grass down, and have been thoughtfully making little (and large) puddles for us to splash through. At one point I thought I was going to lose a welly, and have a lot of explaining to do when I turned up at work covered in mud (I'm sure it won't be the last time).

Apparently this will be our field too, and those our dry stone walls. I love dry stone walls. I always have (except for a brief period as a teenager, when on a school trip to the Lake District we listed what we thought were the Most Boring Jobs in the World - number one was working in a shoe shop, and number two was building dry stone walls).  

I had a go at building a dry stone wall once - it was like doing an extremely heavy and complicated jigsaw. Fortunately I like jigsaws, and am planning to book myself onto a dry stone walling course as soon as we move.

I'm still not entirely sure what we're going to do with all those fields. Our friends and family are, of course, ready with a series of suggestions from the boring-and-sensible-but-wouldn't-be-allowed-in-a-national-park to the preposterous. I make no apology for not turning our particular corner of the Peak District into a festival site, caravan storage or pet cemetery. 

I think it's far more likely that we'll start with the field closest to the house, plant some veg, and then work outwards as we settle in. I don't want to make too many firm plans in case it all goes wrong... 

So it looks like we'll be spending much of the winter in the city, which I don't really mind, because the sun is shining here and there's a lot less mud. I've been tramping around and about the place and mostly taking photographs of trees. 

Our little garden bird table is attracting quite a few visitors, and now the leaves have all fallen off the lilac, we get quite a good view. This little goldfinch arrived yesterday morning as I was having breakfast. 

There's a robin there at the minute, and a couple of weeks ago (when the leaves were still around) a squirrel made several trips up and down, up and down, burying seeds in the ground. 

We've resigned ourselves to spending one last Christmas in our old house. It's not a bad thing really.  New year, new house. If it all goes to plan of course...