It's Christmas time!

I love Christmas! Only 11 days to go now and I am really beginning to feel festive. I think Christmas is even more fun now that I have little children of my own; like many parents I am conscious of making it magical for them (and me!).

We have "written" letters to Santa. The inverted commas are because we did them just before Rosie's fourth birthday and, although she can manage a passable 'Rosie' she's not quite up to a full scale Santa letter yet. So instead we took the Argos catalogue and other Christmas brochures apart, got out the scissors and the glue and did collages.

Last night we sent them to Santa via the medium of smoke. Brian opened up the wood burning stove and popped the letters onto its roaring logs. Hannah and Rosie told the resulting smoke that they had been good girls and mentioned the specific presents they would most like to have (Mummy took notes).

Then there was the tree. We built it together - because of the wood burning stove which, at full throttle, is hotter than lava - we have an artificial tree which has a central stem and poke in branches. It isn't the same as a real tree - but we tried a real tree once and had a naked tree standing above a pile of needles by December 2nd.

Once the tree was made the girls elbowed me aside and grabbed the box of decorations. I stood at a safe distance, just popping in to remind them to decorate the back too.

Meanwhile I fashioned a wreath out of holly, ivy and some rather voluptuous viburnum, added some fairy lights and baubles and hung it on the door. The icicle lights are up, as are the twinkling lights on the beech hedge and we're nearly ready for Santa.

All that remains now is to make some reindeer food (bird seed, loads of glitter, mix up, then sprinkle outside on the driveway on Christmas Eve - the glitter disappears eventually.) and hang up our stockings.