Last Christmas I decided to save some mony o christmas treedecorations and make them myself.
I got some green ribon and went collecting pine cones from the local woods. I got a really nice collection and started to string them together in bunches of three and finished them off with a green bow.
I left them all on the kitchen table over night and the next morning....the whole table was crawling with bugs!!!! It's a slatted oak table and they had all got down between the slats.
The only thing I could do was to spray the whole table and decorations with fly spray and the smell didn't go away all christmas. What a pong and not very Christmassy!!
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Don't do what I did!!Don't do what I did!!Free hens are happy hens. Chicken centreparcs now complete! The girls love it.
How awful!
I do empathise though! Many years ago when the kids were small, I took them out and we collected acorns. My son popped them in a box under his bed and one day a friend went in there to get something and shouted down that there were maggots all over the carpet!! 
I had a couple of disasters too last Xmas - all my carefully hand made cards fell apart in the post (sticky pads weren't sticky enough) and my oven broke down on Xmas day so I was left sobbing over Xmas lunch, which we eventually ate about 5.30pm!  Helen xx
3 children, 3 grandchildren, 3 chooks, 3 fish, a shrimp that thinks its a prawn and a dappy dog. http://www.acountrygrandma.blogspot.com
As A Carer i have worked the past 2 xmas's working both xmas eve, double shift and xmas day doouble shift!
This year i have off!  Last xmas even though i was at work i came down with the flu xmas eve! My daughter stays over xmas so she got all the dinner sorted for me we have 10 usually she did everything bless her, she is a very good cook, and saved the day! 
stace Bev xx
http://www.freshstartforhens.co.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" One year hubby decided to be really helpful - prepared all the veg and spuds on Christmas Eve - bless.
Christmas Day was us and our 3 lads and dad-in-law and all went smoothly. Boxing day - the 5 of us again, my mum and step-dad and my sis, hubby and kids. All was going well, meat cooked and resting, spuds bubbling away and waiting for them to be ready to put in the roasting pan, and waiting, and waiting - still they were hard, like bullets  And they never did soften up, and no one has ever stopped teasing me about it. It would seem that the starch or something had leeched out into the water over the 48 hours since they had been peeled.
Needless to say every year since all the veg have been prepped on Boxing Day morning
not had any disasters on Chrismas day yet, sure it will happen one day, our disaster was hogmany, the first one we had said we would waken our daughter for and go out first footing, so we all headed off to bed for a bit of a nap seting the alarm clock for 11pm, woke up and thought boy is my nose cold
 and turned to OH and asked if he has switched the heating off? not only was it off it had broken down, he spent hogmanay under the floor of the house getting to a juntion box or something that the plumer had fitted in the worst place posible when fiting the boiler, did not wake my daughter up as the house was sooooooooooooooooo cold, and ended up going back to bed, we had no heating for 3days untill we could get the spares once the shops opened again. not untill you dont have the central heating that you realise how much it actual does heat your home, thank goodness we have a stove in the living room and the LPG gas cooker in the kitchen, dont know how we would have coped other wise.We decided to have a Scottish New Year about 12 years ago and booked a lovely hotel with us and the kids plus my mum and step-dad. It looked really pretty when we arrived with snow all around, but the first thing we thought when we walked insdie was how cold it was. The 'roaring log fire' that the blurb had boasted was two pieces of wood in a cavernous room, and the bedrooms were so chilly you could see yuor breath
We asked the owners if the heating could be turned up a bit as my mum was developing as we later found out, a very nasty flu-bug. They told us we were nesh southerners (they came from London!). So step-dad went to the car and brought his tool kit in to try to adjust the rad in their bedroom, but it made no difference. We made the most of it and had quite a laugh on New Years Eve, made snowmen on New Years Day and headed home on 2nd Jan. Got in and you guessed it - our heating had broken down Mum and Rog turned up shortly after we arrived as they were staying with us for the night before heading home to Cornwall. We had been saying all the time 'never mind mum, you'll be warm at ours'. But it was freezing. We stayed in the living room as much as possible with the gas fire on high. It was bitterly cold outside of course! We left the gas hob on in the kitchen (it melted the extractor fan above it that still needs replacing even now). And to cap it all no hot water as the immersion heater unbeknown to us had also stopped working 
Think my mum was glad to be back at home in Cornwall, but it took another couple of weeks before she was well again. Still its a New Year we will never forget  We seemed to have moved away from frugality, never mind, I will add my bit and keep it going. Talking of disasterous New Years, many years ago I was going out with a chappie from Stirling who was a few years younger than me, and he invited me to join him and his family at their Hogmanay celebrations. I jumped at the chance, as it was to be a party held in their BIG detatched home, and all that free food was tempting, (frugal).
The last day of the year, Jimmy's mum and dad had been busy with the preparations, a smashing spread had been laid out, a lovely log fire, me and Jimmy opened a bottle of wine, and it was snowing outside. I was getting excited about seeing how they celebrated in Scotland. Only a few hours left to wait, it was perfect. Then DISASTER, it all changed within an hour. I didn't get to go to the party, I'm going to stop there, and leave the rest up to your imagination, invent your own ending, ha ha. shocked at the time, but  it's funny now.
Ilona
Last edited by Meanqueen on 02 Nov 2008, 15:44, edited 1 time in total.
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