Writing Christmas cards each year is a love/hate exercise for me.

I love the little ritual that means Christmas is getting closer, I love getting in touch with people I haven’t spoken to for ages, I even like the logistical organisation of tidying up the address book and updating the spreadsheet list of recipients (yes, I am an Excel addict, no I haven’t managed to put pivot tables into the Christmas card & gift database yet – I’m working on it).

But there’s also an underlying subtext – huge guilt that there’s good friends in there that I haven’t spoken to since last year. I used to do a round robin type letter as a way of catching up (I love receiving them myself from friends) except they have so much bad press these days, that I feel too embarrassed to do one now. Increasingly, I’m directing friends to this blog despite my initial plan that this would be my little anonymous space on the web. At least this way I have some hope of keeping in touch, even if it’s the occasional “hi” in my comments (oh, and by the way, please feel free to use that comment link below [subtle hint]!)

I’m also noticing that my handwriting is deteriorating at an exponential rate. I just don’t “write” these days – I type. And as I touch type at speeds that outrun my common sense and ability to mentally string words together, picking up a pen is just a disaster waiting to happen. I’d be amazed if more than 50% of the cards reach their destination and aren’t just left in a pile on the post office floor as completely illegible.

So, what about you? Do you love sending and receiving Christmas cards or loathe them? Do you leave them all to the last minute then get writer’s cramp in one evening or have a carefully orchestrated system where they were all written by the end of the summer holidays? Talk to me damnit :)

Every year, I buy a load of Christmas cards, then put the spare ones up in the loft for the following year. Every year, I forget to check before picking up a box of new ones. This year, I remembered to send Akra up to the loft to check.

He’s pulled out of the Christmas box all the spare cards that we’ve squirrelled away over the years. There are sixty-four of them. That’s right …. SIXTY-FOUR!

By my calculation, I only needed 48… D’you think the remaining 16 will cover all of Akra Jr’s school friends or is he going to want to paper the entire class?!

Forgotten to get yourself an advent calendar this year? Never fear! Radiac.net is here…

… now it’s December, am I allowed to mention the ‘C’ word?

Yes, it’s that time of year already, and yes I am ever so slightly panicked as this will be the first year we’ll be holding Christmas here with my mum and her boyfriend coming to stay. I just have this nagging doubt that I should have been planning and organising long before this. I started off with the grand plan that I would be making everything from scratch and being a Supermum, but have already delegated out the cake making to my mother and the Christmas pud to Mr J Sainsbury. I suspect much more is going to slide in that direction before long.

As an example of my organisational skills not quite being equal to my ideas, this year I found this FAB Playmobil advent calendar for Akra Jr. Woke up this morning, realised the date and got it out the cupboard ready to give to him. It was then I read the small print “Important for Parents: Assemble before giving to children! Time required for assembly: about 25 minutes” – *scream*. Still, he was absolutely ecstatic with the carboard living room scene and his very first Playmobil piece for it: a small side table. So it was worth the delay getting ready this morning after all!

Li’l Bhaji will have to wait until this afternoon for the old velcro winter scene advent calendar to be put up on the wall for him.