Still got my Little Grey Rabbit book, though not sure of the title offhand. In all seriousness, I think the beautiful illustrations and a vague sense of doom in the book may be a deep seated reason I am interested in small animals/birds, wanting to protect them. I don't remember Tressie though. And I didn't know those tiles (in my Mum's house when it was built in 1970, we had yellow ones in the downstairs loo and blue in the bathroom, I think you could also get pink and aqua) were called vein, they also reminded me of a budgie. In our family we seem to keep our Xmas cards for years and years. I used a whole bunch when I started quilt making, as the template for the squares, but it is quite distressing when you come across loving messages from long dead people, but somehow we don't seem to be able to bring ourselves to throw them away.
Onto more cheerful things, I'm not one for streamers and bunting, probably because I also have memories of having to make paper chains out of coloured paper, but I do love a well laden tree in terms of tinsel, baubles and as many (multicoloured) lights as you can find. Nowadays I just cut branches off a nearby tree (ours) and decorate that, rather than buying in a tree. Does everyone else have a tradition that most years you buy one new bauble? Actually the house in Portugal was fully furnished when we moved in, complete with somebody elses Christmas, which is a bit weird! The one thing I always do is collect pine cones, spray them with a mixture of silver/gold/glitter (the louder the better) and arrange them on the mantelpiece, on some greenery. I haven't been brave enough to light candles as I'll probably set the house on fire, but I'm sure that would look good. The other thing I always do is cut whatever flower/attractive greenery/berries I can find in the garden for the Xmas lunch table.
