How to celebrate new years day?

Sunrise on new years day 2013

This year my intention is not to stay up all night to see the new year in. Instead I hope to get up in time to see the dawn of the first day. This idea came to me yesterday and feels very right to me and, bearing in mind that sunrise is not particularly early at the moment, very achievable even if I do stay up later than intended.

We are supposed to be getting sunshine tomorrow so I'm hoping to get in a good days work outside - I really need a day in the garden. For our evening meal I'm going to let my sons decorate the table to make it special for celebrating the start of the new year.

***** So, what happened?

We did see the sunrise, shown above. It wasn't quite the experience I'd hoped for but with grumpy children and a dad with cold toes I guess it wasn't too bad, it certainly felt right to me. We walked up a hill fairly close to our house, next year I would like to be more organised and take the makings of a warm breakfast with us (soup for breakfast?) and perhaps use Hambledon Hill which is an okay drive away. But with it all relying on reasonable weather there is no point in me making too many plans this far ahead.

New Years meal

The garden was still too sloshy to do much but kindling was cut, the cars were vacuumed and our chimney re-covered. I don't feel as if we wasted the daylight hours for a change. Tea was pretty simple, roast pork and apple sauce eaten as sandwiches followed by some lemon curd tarts topped with baileys tinted cream (the tarts were like little suns to me - something I'd like to see more of this year). Delicious, simple but still festive thanks to the candles, placemats and mismatched tablecloth. Crackers and Schloer rounded it off nicely, enjoyed by all.