Festive Recital and living Christmas trees

Yesterday was our home ed festive recital. It was a wonderful affair featuring a Steiner inspired puppet show, performances on a variety musical instruments, jokes, songs, a performing Lego robot and a recital of Pussy Cat Pussy Cat Where Have You Been? by my own little star, Miles. Hermione chose not to perform this year - which is absolutely fine.

In addition to lots of great performances we also shared festive food, laughs and hugs. It truly was a special afternoon. Many of the children had performed in last years recital and it was great to see how they had grown in confidence and ability over the year.

Off to bed now. I've had a wonderful evening out with Craig and have perhaps drank one too many Slippery Nipples (even if I did only have one - that was possibly one too many!). I need to be bright and breezy tomorrow morning as we are going to pot up our Christmas tree.

I've been having a dilemma about the tree. We already have a small fir in a pot which I bring in at Christmas time, but usually our main tree is a felled fresh tree. I'm not happy about this but at the same time I'm not happy about artificial trees either. How to get around the problem of sustainable growth for fresh trees, or alternatively the petro chemical implications of artificial trees? The solution seemed to me to have a large, live potted fir tree. I have looked in the past couple of years but they have been ever so expensive. So, you can imagine, I was delighted when I spotted 6ft live trees in Wilkinsons for only £18. They have been harvested with as much of the root ball as possible intact so in theory they should re root and survive if planted on. Considering our cut tree usually costs about £30 this represents a huge saving especially if it roots and we can just bring it in each year for Christmas and leave it in the garden the rest of the time. Here's hoping it does prove to be a win win situation - lighter on our finances and lighter on our planet.