Getting to Know you - getting to know all about you !

Just a little Christmas fun - have a go if you like !

1.Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper - this year I am doing brown paper with lots of lovely coloured ribbons and baggage tags with the photo of the recipient on them - I hope it works out - I love wrapping !!

2. Real tree or Artificial? I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to have a real tree and we always did in the UK - the biggest we could manage - sadly here to get a real tree is a nightmare - you have to order it - the cost hundreds of pounds and the only arrive on 23 Dec - no good for us I'm afraid.

3. When do you put up the tree? The first weekend of December earlier if I can get away with it !

4. When do you take the tree down? We don't have a certain date that we always take the tree down by - sometime in the new year when it feels right usually does for us.

5. Do you like eggnog? I have never tried the stuff so I have no idea.

6. Favourite gift received as a child? probably my Walkman - I wanted it desperately and was convinced I wasn't getting it so I was so delighted when I opened it up.

7. Hardest person to buy for? My brother and my brother in law - men are so tough !

8. Easiest person to buy for? My two boys they just love most things.

9. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes - three ! A ceramic one and two playmobil ones they are great for the children.


10. Mail or email Christmas cards. E:mail - it is much easier for us here in Oman.


11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Gosh - can't remember - there have been some doozies !!!

12. Favourite Christmas Movie? Love Actually - makes me cry and laugh every time I see it - infact I might watch it later !

13. When do you start shopping? about the middle of November I would say.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? No I don't think so.

15. Favourite thing to eat at Christmas? Everything ! I love food too much !

16. Lights on the tree? As many as my husband will let me put on !

17. Favourite Christmas song? Santa Baby by Ertha Kitt - just fab !

18, Travel at Christmas or stay home? Well since we live half way round the world from all our family we do a bit of both. Some years we travel home and some years we stay here - this year we are staying here - doesn't feel all that Christmassy though sadly !

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's? No - I always forget them - still I remember the most important one - Rudolf - where would Santa be without his red nose ?!

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Angel - we have the same one every year and I still love it.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas morning.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Trying to get everyone in the Christmas mood when it is 26 degrees outside and there is not a scrap of Christmas decoration up.

23. Favourite ornament theme or color? Red all the way for me.

24. Favourite for Christmas dinner? Goose - we are doing it this year but my oven is totally unreliable so I am not sure how it's going to turn out.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? A new tennis racquet, some clothes and as always as much wool as is humanly possible !

I hope you have got to know me a bit better from that - please do have a go and let me know I'd love to know your answers too.

Ta ta

The Big Read Meme

I stole this from Little Lixie - I'm sure she won't mind ! Looked like fun to me. Have a go if you feel like it.

These am the rules

- Look at the list and bold those you have read.
- Italicise the books you LOVE.
- Post your list so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and
force books upon them.


1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Awful bilge.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible Bits of it.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare Bits of.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh S
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis About 3 books of the set.
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville S
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo **

Well I hope that works - I feel like I have read quite a lot of the list, but there are lots more I can still read. I don't seem to get the time to do much reading at the moment. I am part of a book club here in lovely Muscat and I only manage to read that book plus maybe one more in the month - children will do that to you I suppose. I can't wait for the day until I can read a book in a day again !! not that I am wishing my time away with the children I'm really not, but I do miss reading as much as I used to - still that time will come again I guess.