Shortest day of the year!!

What a strange feeling it is not to be rushing around getting the last minute christmas shopping etc! I feel wonderfully calm and unstressed....but I am missing all that SOoooo much!!! I have done Christmas for our family for so many years ( can't even remember how many) that NOT having to cook this time is kinda odd. Usually I am knee-deep in my Delia cookbook and old magazines which I dig out every year just for the recipes, re-making lists and adding new ones, polishing the silverwear, getting the table decorations ready..........playing the carols, drinking the sherry............its not normal!!!! It will be really nice being with other people this Christmas and we are all really looking forward to it a lot,so I am gritting my teeth and letting someone else have all that stress!! It is a white, cold world out there this morning. I was up at 6.30am adding the icing to Tim's traybake for school today, and it was dark then. Now it is around ten am and it is gorgeous! No snow yet, but it is getting closer. The sharp frost is the reason all is white. Lovely spiders webs out there which I have photographed of course, but am now in need of coffee to warm me up before I do anything with them! It is also sad to think that really I can start (thinking about) putting the christmas scrapstuff away for another year........ which is so sad! On the other hand it WILL mean that I need to visit the scrap shops for NEW STUFF!! Which I am going to do in January. First of all I am going to buy the wool for my 2 patterns which I am desperate to start knitting. Having looked here I have decided I need to buy that in England as I cannot find what I want for it here. Maybe in Hoorn there is the chance of finding it, but who knows....where is the shop?!! Oh no, the worst christmas song has come on the radio and I refuse to listen to it!