A letter to my daughter at 15 months

Dear Autumn,

We had so much festive fun together in your 14th month. You got two more teeth through, which wasn’t so much fun, but we got through those unsettled nights. The upside is you now have two more beautiful teeth to enjoy chomping your food with. The day you turned 14 months old, we were on holiday at Bluestone. As such, I didn’t use a milestone card or sticker. Frustratingly, I keep forgetting to use them. Although, I’m unsure whether they stopped at 12 months. I’ll try to do better next month…although you’d probably just instantly peel a sticker off and present it to me! 

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Meeting Farmer Christmas at Broadditch Farm

On Monday, Autumn, Dave and I went to meet Farmer Christmas at Broadditch Farm. Yes, that’s right. Not “Father Christmas”, FARMER Christmas! I’ve been to Broadditch in Southfleet, Kent (near Gravesend) before for their Halloween and Easter events. They’ve been fantastic and there is also a wonderful farm shop I enjoy visiting. However, I’d never taken part in any of their Christmas activities before.

The best Santa’s Grottos often sell out weeks or even months in advance, so I quickly booked us in at the beginning of November. Funnily enough, it was the first Santa’s grotto I booked into, but the last one we’ll actually visit before Christmas! We saw Santa at a local preloved sale at the beginning of last month and again at Bluestone the following week.

Please excuse the quality of the photos in this post. It was dark and I only had my phone’s camera with me!

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Rochester Dickensian Christmas Weekend 2017

A couple of weekends ago, we went to Rochester Christmas Market. We chose that particular weekend, as it was also the Dickensian Christmas Weekend. Charles Dickens lived locally in Higham and many of his novels were inspired by the surrounding area. This is one of two festivals in Rochester throughout the year in which Dickens enthusiasts, re-enactors and many others gather and celebrate Charles Dickens with members of the public.

We arrived just in time for one of the first parades of the day. It’s always such a delight to see so many beautiful outfits and smiley faces. It’s great fun and feels very festive!

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Elves Behavin’ Badly

I’m a bit late blogging about it. I’ve been ill with one thing or another for the vast majority of the past 3 months. This has put me behind with absolutely everything! Obviously, Autumn, my day job and any paid commitments on the blog have had to come first.

Anyway, a couple of months ago I got an email saying that I’d won a competition with Elves Behavin’ Badly. It was something I entered at Blog On Xmas. It was a total surprise, as I thought it had probably already been drawn by then! The elves at the event loved my turkey hat and that clinched my prize!

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6 Highlights of our Christmas trip to Bluestone

We were recently invited for a midweek break at Bluestone, Wales. Pembrokeshire is such a beautiful part of the world and we’ve previously been on holiday there for our honeymoon and first anniversary/babymoon. I’ve heard wonderful things about Bluestone, so I was very excited. To add to the excitement, at this time of year, it transforms into Christmasland. There are lots of Christmas activities on, including Kingdom of the Elves which I’ve heard so much about. This year’s theme is a visit to Elftopia.

I want to blog in more detail about our week away soon, but first, here are my 5 top highlights!

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