Thank you Santa!

Christmas is over as is the short painting break caused by travel. I didn't finish the Panzerschützen in time for friday as 10 halftracks was apparently too much for one day. They'll be up next week then. I did manage to paint up two 15mm planes for the fortnight challenge though so not completely silent on the Challenge front.

Luckily we finally got snow as it was first looking to be quite a dark Christmas. The weather has been quite nice with roughly 20cm of snow and temperatures staying low enough to keep it dry and soft. This year I was particularly lucky with the gifts as I have been extra nice. Then again buying gifts for myself helped boost the amounts quite a bit :)

Secret Santa was very generous and quite thoughtful too! Not keeping to just a box I received a Warlord Games Universal Carrier with extra bits and instructions to convert it to a captured version with a German PaK36 stuck on top. Should prove to be a fun project and will be seen later on in the challenge. Thank you to who ever it was that sent this nice package to me!

The lady of the house got me some wargames related reading in the form of a book called "Lion of the North" which details the reign of Gustav Adolphus from a Finnish point of view. Haven't gotten very far with it yet, but should prove an interesting read as it won the Finnish literature award for non-fiction books this year. Important character for both Sweden and Finland so I can't wait to get through this.

Seeing Caliver Books' list of new second-hand books in the beginning of Christmas got a bit out of hand. I had wanted some new Napoleonic reading so I decided to buy some. But with the postage rates being crazy I thought why not buy a few at the same time and here we are with 5 books to go through. Should keep me occupied for quite a while. The books include The Letters of Private Wheeler detailing the British campaigns in the Peninsula and beyond from a soldiers point of view. Then In the Peninsula with a French Hussar by Albert Jean Michel de Rocca detailing the same campaign from the point of a French hussar officer. And the third memoir is With Napoleon in Russia 1812, by Heinrich Vossler a Würtemberg cavalry officer. Finally I also bought David Johnson's Napoleon's Cavalry and it's Leaders and a Historex Masterclass book by Bill Ottinger called Napoleonic Plastic Figure Modelling.

Next up a frantic few days of painting to finish more miniatures for the challenge before the year ends.