We had a frosty start of December with several early mornings seeing temperatures of 28-30F!
The white, frozen fields, together with clear blue skies made for pretty pictures:

The leaves of my geranium were edged in a sugary-white coating and all other plants and leaves were frozen stiff and crispy.

As you can see in the pic it was minus 2 Celsius one morning.
Funny enough I've only just recently discovered our indoor/outdoor thermometer can be changed from Fahrenheit to Celsius by pushing one of the little buttons twice.
Duhhh .. so much easier than taking 32 of the Fahrenheit, halving the outcome and than adding one degree!

The water puddles on my walk were all frozen, it reminded me of one of my favorite winter-sports to do when I was a child .. skating!

                                                         

Our pond didn't even have the thinnest layer of ice on it though, which I bet these ducks were very happy about.

 

Yes, since the pond filled back up during the rains of late, the first ducks have returned!
Besides a large flock of Mallards this little female Bufflehead showed up as well:

   

I love watching her dive below the surface again and again hunting for small water-insects. She stays under for scary long times, sometime up to 12 seconds!

                         

Thursday, the 5th, of course we had to celebrate 'Sinterklaas' again as we do each year.
I'd watched him arrive in Holland on the dutch TV channel on the 16 of November:

   

As I've explained in previous years the dutch celebrate his birthday (which is on the 6th) on the evening before with the giving of gifts and eating lots of sickening sweet candies and pastries.
I baked Banketstaaf-jes (almondpaste in puff-pastry) and instead of my usual Speculaas I tried my hand at Taai-taai (a sort of gingerbread with lots of honey and aniseed) this year which was surprisingly easy to do and very tasty!

 

As usual we didn't bother with the gift giving. We have everything we want and if not we buy it so we really don't see the point.
I do try to sing some of the traditional children's songs that evening but it gets harder every year to remember them ..

And of course I also made a start in decorating for the season:

                                                                       

The wreath is hung, a little tree sits on the patio table and the outside lights are up:

Let the holidays begin!

 

Lets see, what else? Oh yeah, we started a different health regime. Getting sort of head-start on our New Year's resolution if you will ..
We usually only eat fruit for breakfast these days (we're less active than we used to be) but sometimes that was a little on the light side for me. It made me shaky on my walks so I needed something 'more'.

Besides that I think we could also do with a little more veggies.

So here's what we do know .. we have a smoothy!

We have a banana (half each) with fruit and (almond) milk, oats, nuts and maybe some avocado or spinach .. whatever tickles my fancy (or what needs to be eaten) and I use a hand-blender to blend it all together.

Eh, voila! Healthy and delicious and a lot heftier than 'just' fruit!

OK, there you have it. It's December and life is cozy and festive and peaceful (and cold). 
Yup, life is good!