What are you all up to

Went to the Christmas Illuminations at Whimpole Abbey on Saturday night, truely spectacular and quite magical even for an oldie like me, the grandson was spellbound. Apparently similar events are taking place at Anglesea Abbey and The Cambridge Botanic Gardens, all within a 15 mile radius. I'd recommend this but choose your night wisely, it was a clear moonlit night and very cold but the mulled wine half way round certainly helped.

Kj said :- Our store must have a different layout to yours, stairs and lifts, and turning left upstairs you end up in the restaurant.  

The MK branch is the same but all the household/kitchenware items is just past the restaurant so no need to go through the furniture section.

Interestingly Milton Keynes wasn't the first choice for IKEA to build a store in our area, Northampton was the original planned location but for some reason the local Council turned it down which is difficult to understand. Their loss our gain and the MK IKEA branch is now part of a large development on the outskirts of Bletchley, including the largest ASDA (apparently) in the country, MK1 shopping district and Stadium MK.

David

A very cold but totally windless day. A beautiful walk around Buttermere.

Morning food shopping then we set to and shifted the music centre around and assembled 2 of the 4 items from IKEA. 

Of course we couldn't get the speakers to work. Half an hour later I turned the socket on.

Just roasting the first Rhubarb of the winter, to go with braised Bramley Apples. Let them cool down and have them with cold custard and/or Greek Yoghurt.

🤭Love it WN🤣

Beautiful photo Corners. Last time I did walk around Buttermere, it was like stair rods, water pouring off the hillsides. I’m like a jinx if I go to Lakes, it pours it down. Been lovely here today, I managed a short walk out from Mum’s.

Great photo, CS. Appropriately, when I saw it, I was just listening to "The Beauty of Everyday Things" by Luke Bloom.T

Our home electric toaster started to make funny noises so we decided to get a new one. Found just what wanted at Argos in their Black Friday sale, and I had  Love2shop voucher from Sports England for £5 for filling in a couple of questionsaires, so we got the new one at 35% of the original price!shore

It being a lovely sunny, but chilly, morning we had another walk by the shore. As well as Curlews, Stonechats and Oysterchatchers there was a large mixed flock of about 200 Dublin and Knot feeding on the waterline. Have booked another couple of sites for our Xmas trip, now waiting for word from a commercial site before booking our first site.

Third time lucky some say! We have been trying to get into The Centre Milton Keynes for three days. On Monday we made an attempt in the car but it was chaos, I think something to do with it being Cyber Monday so we turned round and came home. Yesterday we had planned to go in on the bus but had a phone call from youngest son saying he had a dental appointment nearby so would drop in to see us. He had just come back from France and he got me a tin of duck cassoulet. He also finished setting up our new TV which was useful. So today was day three and we did mange to get there on the bus. Christmas is in full swing in Middleton Hall (see below) for those that know it and the whole Centre seemed pretty busy so hopefully the shops will have a better Christmas this year? One of the reasons for being there was that Margaret's new glasses one of the arms has come away from the frame. It seems just to push in but there is no grip. We went into Boots expecting them to work their magic but instead they said the will order a completely new pair of glasses which seemed to me quite wasteful given how expensive they were! I wonder if I might try some PTFE tape?

David

Good to see your pictures of Middleton Hall David.  We often used to visit the centre for Christmas when we lived near Bedford.  We know what you mean about the traffic though, it was bad 16 years ago so I’m sure it’s worse now!  

The picture of Buttermere is stunning WN.  We have one from the same spot, similar to yours but not quite as beautiful.  

IKEA is our bete noire, we really dislike it, not the items at all we have some of them, just the store.  When we were visiting the family in Macau in February, they live in an apartment above an IKEA  it’s smaller than our UK ones but just as confusing!!!   We found it handy for a quick meal but that’s it.  

Very cold week here it’s been dropping below freezing most nights lots of frost around in the mornings. IKEA Glasgow is only 20 miles from us so we visit there often as SWMBO likes to go I’m not a fan but like the cafe so normally go along. 

Thanks for all the comments about the photo but really all I had to do was be there.

Another very cold day here but again no wind at all but there's snow back home.

We did a walk up the old mine road in-between Causey Pike and Outerside. Too frosty to venture off it but great all the same.