Christmas on the Island.

I do love this time of year, it's such a great excuse to get together. It seems that heading to the Isle of Wight for Christmas has become somewhat of a tradition for Moon and I and I don't think I'd have it any other way.

It's pretty great to have friends that live in nice places to visit. Pip and Stacy are great hosts and we really made the most of our short trip, it was such a nice weekend.


Isn't their cat, Puss, lovely? She's so friendly but she used to be as aloof as Doll, still hoping.



We went to Arreton Barns to kill a bit of time before the rest of the guests arrived, it has not one but two(!) glass blowing workshops, a few cute gift shops, a farm shop and a pretty good penny arcade, as well as one hella sad snowman that we caught dragging his feet to an unknown location on the grounds...










After a beautiful walk up along the headland near Brighstone we headed into Brighstone village to catch their annual Christmas Tree festival, a kitsch celebration held across various locations featuring, you guessed it, a lot of Christmas trees. Each tree was sponsored by different businesses from across the Isle of Wight and they'd each decorated them in their own way. It was hard to pick a favourite but I think I liked Grange Farm's offering best, there were eggs and lots of lights! My picture doesn't really do it justice.






The tree on the left is from the Isle of Wight Donkey Sanctuary, which visited last time.



We exchanged our Secret Santa gifts before heading to a great restaurant called, The Coast Bar where I had my first Turducken and the best crab mousse.






For the rest of the evening we played games, sung along to Christmas songs and watched as much as we could of this video (you're welcome).

A slightly hungover early afternoon was spent in Sandown bowling on the pier and eating chips before it was time to head home.



I'm pretty excited that it's now less than two weeks until I see some of this lot again as usually we go for a few months. For New Year's Eve it will be our turn to entertain and the bar has been set pretty high(!) ♥

You can have a peek at the last two Wight Christmases here and here.

Braving Bath Christmas Market.

A couple of weekends ago, Me, Moon and a few of our friends took ourselves to Bath for the Christmas Market. A much more stressful affair than our first visit the same time last year, Bath was crammed full of shoppers eager for Black Friday deals - in hindsight the combination of the Christmas Market's opening weekend and the hysteria that seemed to surround the Black Friday, it might not have been our brightest idea, at least, it wasn't ever going to make for the nicest shopping experience ever.



Last year we wandered through at a pretty relaxed pace, but this year we were hardly able to see half of the market due to the sheer volume of people and we spent more time looking around the actual shops. With that being said, Bath has a fantastic selection of shops and a great mixture of both independent and typica; highstreer. I don't know why this was the first time I've been back since last Christmas, it's really so close by it deserves a bit more attention.



We stopped for lunch at a great Italian place called Aio after going to the usual chain places and discovering that despite having lots of seats available, a lot of places were an hour or so wait (I'm mainly looking at you, Carluccio's!) - Aio was delicious, I'm stilling dreaming of this mushroom lasagne...! ♥




Elsie Belle had managed to bag pretty much the same spot as the previous year, I'm always coveting something of theirs, always good to have a nosey.


Not picking up one of these wreaths might be one of my Christmas market regrets, they smelt so good!








These 'Drink More Gin' coaster decorations from The Bath Gin Company were super cute but already sold out by the time we arrived...






Unfortunately the Christmas market did kind of make everyone in our party a little stressed out and it wasn't exactly the perfect environment for catching up but Bath is still a beautiful city and I'd still pick it for another day out, just maybe not (ever) in the throws of mental Christmas shopping mayhem.