Joanna Yeates was the girl next-door with everything to look forward to.

Having recently celebrated a graduation and moved to a new home with her boyfriend, her countdown to Christmas last year was filled with optimism.

Family members described the petite blonde as being at the happiest point of her adult life.

''She had so much life in her,'' David Yeates, her father, said.

For that reason they immediately feared the worst after finding out she was missing.

Mr Yeates said his daughter and her boyfriend, Greg Reardon, were ''totally in love and devoted to each other''.

''She had all the space she wanted and no work worries and no money worries,'' he added.

Miss Yeates, 25, had been looking forward to Mr Reardon joining her for the festive holiday at her parents' home.

While she expressed concerns about him being away on the night of December 17, she had been planning to spend the weekend finishing her shopping and making mince pies.

''We also had a get-together coming up and she wanted to do some baking,'' Mr Reardon said.

Miss Yeates was brought up in middle-class surroundings alongside her older brother Chris in Ampfield, Hampshire.

Her best friend Rebecca Scott, who went to sixth-form college with Miss Yeates at Peter Symonds College in Winchester, praised her loyalty.

Miss Yeates preferred spending time with her childhood mates, describing some of her new Bristol friends as ''girly''.

Miss Scott said they were planning to meet up in Romsey in Hampshire on Christmas Eve.

She said she was pleased Miss Yeates was in love, adding: ''I was just happy for her.''

Miss Yeates often socialised with colleagues but was said to be usually the first to leave as she ''always wanted to be with Greg''.

Darragh Bellew, who was bought a pint by Miss Yeates as they joined staff from her BDP landscape architectural firm at The Ram pub on the night she died, described her cheerful character.

Her boss Keith Pavey, who hired her at the Bristol firm in 2008, has previously said she was excelling in her job.

''She's a very effervescent young lady and a gifted architect,'' he told BBC Five Live at the time of her disappearance.

After finishing her A-levels in Winchester, Miss Yeates studied landscape design and horticulture at Writtle Agricultural College, in Essex.

She then took a master's degree at Winchester University before obtaining further post-graduate qualifications at the University of Gloucestershire.

Having moved to Bristol, she began seeing Mr Reardon in December 2008 after they worked together on a BDP project.

Miss Yeates, who drove a Ford Ka, first moved into a flat with him in Westbury Park, Bristol.

They moved into their one-bed flat at 44 Canynge Road, Clifton, on October 25 last year.

Despite her 5ft 4in frame, Miss Yeates developed a taste for adventure sports. She especially enjoyed surfing, skiing and snowboarding.

A Red Dwarf DVD boxset still resting on the shelves of her basement flat suggested she also enjoyed a quiet night in.

She doted over their black-and-white cat, Bernard, and enjoyed watching BBC reality show The Apprentice.

Even the judge at her Bristol Crown Court murder trial appeared to hold her in high esteem. Mr Justice Field described her as ''a lovely young woman with a promising future ahead of her''.