L is for Lemon & Lime

For my 40th birthday nearly 2 years ago someone actually brought me a lemon and a lime tree for a present.
I thought it was one of the best gifts I received.

They have both since been planted in the garden and we have watched them grow so well over the last 18 months.
The lemon tree is in full bloom with fruit.

Not sure if they will ever turn yellow but if they do I will have more lemons than I can handle. Will have to find plenty of recipes for lemons!

The lime tree is growing but has not fruit. Not sure whether this is normal and that they take longer to get fruit on first time round or not. But it is growing well, is still nice and green and seems very happy, so will not panic that it has no fruit as of yet.

Christmas Tour

For the last 2 years, 1 of the blogs I follow has always done a Christmas House Tour, where you go and get welcomed into others homes via their blogs and see how they have decorated for the holidays.

I have decided this year to give you all a tour of my tree. I have so many decorations that have special meaning to me so have decided to share a few with you. A few are old, but most are new to the family in the last couple of years and hopefully will adorn our tree for years to come.

This is the angel on the top of the tree. I am not sure where I got her from but have had her for a long time now. She always gets centre stage on the top of the tree.

This is the oldest decoration I have on the tree. I got it when I lived in Wapakoneta, Ohio in 1985, although I do not actually know who gave it to me, although I know Mum will know, but knowing my luck it will probably be from her and then I will look real stupid!

This is Steve's decoration. He got it from Disney Land when he was there one year, but that was at least 11 or 12 yrs ago! This is the one decoration that he always puts on the tree.

This is the newest decoration we have on the tree. I treated ourselves to this one last year as a reminder of how special 2008 was to us (the year we got married) It is a Hallmark one and I just love the glistening look of it.

This reindeer is from a cute Christmas shop in London. Steve and I brought it whilst there on holiday in 2001. We also got a snowman to go with it, but I couldn't get the camera to take a very good picture of the snowman!

Back in 2001 and for several years after that, the managment of the Theatre dept in Auckland Hospital actually made small token gifts as thank you presents for all the staff. No easy task I can tell you.

These 2 tags are the ones Steve and I got in 2001, the next year they did little terracota pots with christmas cake inside, the pots were decorated with decoupage as well. We had some clever managment. So these remind us both of all the years we worked there.

These baubles are ones I got for each of the boys as they were born. It has their name and year of birth on. They love having their own thing to put on the tree each year.

Back in 2005, Grandma and Grandad were living in Spain. They were there over the Christmas of that year and so they sent us all a little gift for our tree as our presents that year. These gorgeous decorations have hung on our tree each year ever since and will do so for many years to come. The boys both got a stocking shaped one with santa and a snowman on and Steve and I got a Santa and a Snowman shaped one. I love them all.

Last year at the School Holiday Programme in the week before Christmas Ben made me this present. It is a very special present and it made me cry when I received it!

It has a very cute little verse on it.

If you have trouble reading this then you can check out my post on it from last year when I first received the gift.

So that ends the tour of my tree for this year although there is one more thing to show you...and that is the treee itself.

Merry Christmas to you all

Tree Time

I use to be one of these people that put the tree up a little closer to Christmas.

Now that I have children I would put it up at Midnight on Nov 30 if I was awake!

Now it tends to go up on the first weekend at the beginning of December, so that is what we did last weekend.

Out came the tree and all the decorations and up it went.

We had a little elf helper on the day.

Steve had the task of sorting out the lights....he is good at this.

And once the tree was up I suddenly found that Santa had already been and left us a few gifts under the tree!

Watch out in a little while for a Christmas Tour of my Tree.

Spring

Today is the official first day of spring in New Zealand.

We have been having some lovely sunny days leading up to now.

So much so that all the rhododendron trees have been in full bloom.

We have one in our front yard. Here is what it has been looking like recently.

Sadly with the storms we have had at night the petals have not lasted so long on the tree, but when the sun is shining and it is in full bloom, it is a glorious sight as you come in our driveway.

The Tree

When we drove home from shopping today we found this

Now the weather is not as happy sunny as it was last week, but it is only persitent wet, not storms or showers.

So maybe someone said boo to the tree and it fell over in fright?

Good thing about it was that we didn't like the tree anyway and it was going to get taken out, but just not as soon as this. Maybe it didn't want to stick around and see what we had planned for it.

So house with the tree

And house now without the tree