JYC Days 14,15 and 16

The great thing about JYC this year is that there are two prompts a day, one journaling and one photography so I am taking that as a hint that if I have time on my hands, I can do a blog post and if I don't, I will take a photo.  Time has not been on my side for the last few days so guess which prompt I've followed? 
I offer no apologies for the state of my mittens in the first picture for day 14.

The tales these gloves could tell, the places they've been and the number of times I've thought I've lost them.  I bought them on a whim before we went to Cologne for the Christmas Markets in 2010.  It was freezing cold over there and they were so useful.  The snowflake bit of them is a flap which turns them from gloves to mittens when you flip it over your fingers.  This means that you can easily get your fingers free for buying gifts/holding mugs of Gluhwein/shelling chestnuts straight from the coals of a market stall.  If not in Germany, they are equally useful!  Especially so now I have dog walking duties to attend to, it's impossible to activate a retractable lead in mittens and I cannot go for walkies in the cold with only one hand covered from the elements.  So excuse the pulls in the knitting and the ends of the wool starting to unravel, these things add to the history of my gloves!
Day 15 saw me borrowing the husband's camera to do some close up photography.

Let's just say that I almost broke his new tripod (birthday present just 4 days old), and things got very tense when he continually  tried to give me unasked for advice. 
Day 16
The joyful faces of children opening presents, the 50 small pieces that need to be fitted together to make a 'flat pack' toy, the 300 stickers to make a Playmobil pirate ship look authentic.  Oh yes, we have been there.  But somewhere in between buying those presents and the excited ripping open of the packaging comes this
Metres of wrapping, spools of ribbon, rolls of sellotape, sharp scissors and one rather frazzled woman trying to make a neat tidy present out of something of random shape or texture.  So frazzled that she couldn’t take Shimelle’s suggestion of photographing herself wrapping up as the thought of setting the auto-timer and running a brush through her hair so she looked presentable was too much!
Bring on Day 17!