New Years Day

2013 sunrise

I've just read my post from a year ago and so hope that we can do it again. But the weather forecast is not looking promising so I'm not pinning all of my hopes on getting everybody up. I'm just going to make a promise to myself that I'm going to get out, even if it's just to the bottom of the garden with an umbrella, to see the sun rise. According to the BBC weather site sunrise will be at 08:13.

I love greeting the new year and I prefer to see it having had a full nights sleep rather than staying up until midnight keeping company with the tv. Of course we may yet have visitors, nothing is planned but that doesn't mean much. In my family people seem to call on the day to let us know that they are coming. I think that it's great that we can do that.

I hope that you have a great new year!

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.