Jim took Lily out this afternoon, whilst my mum took Bella to the pantomime, so I used the time on my own to start taking the decorations down ( I know, I could have been sewing or reading or good lord, even napping!). Every year when I put them up I think that I'm going to be miserable when I take them down. And then every year it gets to New Years day and I start to long for them to disappear and for the house to look clean and tidy again.

This decoration is destined to stay though. Especially as it so nicely compliments the lovely oilcloth  that adorns our new kitchen table.  I initially bought the oilcloth to protect the table from the girls' various artistic endeavours but of course love it too much for it to get ruined, so I now put a cheaper Ikea oilcloth on top of the other oilcloth whenever the girls want to draw/paint/playdoh/eat/etc. Actually I have a history of this type of behaviour, and was witnessed recently protecting my solid oak kitchen worktop with a large Ikea chopping board and then protecting that (it was new!) with an old crappy chopping board. I have a feeling that in another life I would have been guilty of leaving the plastic covers on the sofa's!

The other decorations that won't be disappearing are the pom-poms. I so love the way that they look and as we have a number of birthdays on the horizon, it seems silly to take them down now. And I'm sticking to that excuse.

Unfortunately, and much to Bella's annoyance, the snow flakes do have to go though.