Hello bloggers! My, my, isn't it cold now?

Are you being rude? Hey, you have to put on a bit of extra blubber for the winter!! Or winter reserves, don't you? Cos, it really has started to get cold these last few days. We had a big attack of snow, with additional blizzard about a week ago. I remember it was a week, because it was my first time driving my car in the snow. We had to go to our local garage to change our normal tyres for snow tyres. There are police checks at this time of year, to make sure you have fitted your snow tyres. They don't insure you in an accident here, if you don't put your snow tyres on. They grip the road better in icy conditions. Sensible really...........

So, it was a blizzard when we went to go and change my tyres at the garage. Of course, the Swiss, (like many Europeans) don't really understand the concept of a queue! So, you kind of have to eye-ball people, or do a kind of : 'I'm next in the queue' kind of dance. You don't have a lot of a chance of keeping your place if someone in a BMW drives up though! What it is about BMW drivers?? They seem to walk around like cockerals in a pen of hens. You know who you are, BMW drivers!!

But, it's stayed at -3 these last few days. And I have a feeling we're due for a very COLD winter this year. It's already much colder than last year here. I miss that sunshine.

Great times to be painting though - bunking down in the studio to paint. And it's so very quiet here, especially since all the tractors seem to stop grinding around in the winter time. Very peaceful. Sometimes, we get little swiss children coming round to sell charity cards. But, that's about all the excitement we get around here. The children here are delightfully sweet, and polite. Their childhoods seem wonderfully safe and innocent here.

This is just about the time that the neighbours start decorating their houses for Christmas. Last year, our neighbour purchased and fixed a giant snowman outside, for his young children. Well, quite frankly, I saw nothing scarier than a seven foot lit snowman chuckling malevolently through the night. I say chuckling, because anytime a breath of wind came, it began lurching around for the whole of December. A few nights, it seemed to rage like the very devil - in gale-force winds. Plotting evil no doubt! Or maybe I just have an overactive imagination for my age (5). Amazingly, it hung on in there, through gale and hail. Which points even more convincingly to the forces of darkness   Well, I don't know what his youngsters thought, but it scared the hell out of me!!!! I wonder if it will be up and running in the next few days. I'll let you know! Can't they just settle for a Chrismas tree and a wreath??

Here's a little photo of our house covered in snow, from last year. Very cute! And luckily very warm inside. Trouble is, we have an outside thermostat -so, we're either cooking inside, or cold. We can't seem to get it right. We have a real fire, too, which is wonderful for those chilly evenings.......

Ps. Sorry if you couldn't get onto my blog last week. It had a few technical problems, the main one being I forgot to renew my domain