Yay!! Its the holidays!

After two years doing supply, I wasnt appreciating school holidays, since most days stuck at home were boring and rather lonely. But after completing a full term at work, once more I am on holiday and looking forward to the coming weeks.

I think Laura has a few plans for me in order to help her finish off the wedding preparations, and then Martin and I have a further week booked, in a cottage on the Yorkshire Dales. Meanwhile I have a ton of gardening to do (I cant believe how much everything has grown since I have been away, in only four days) a stack of wedding stationary to finish (I still haven't sourced those red eyelets though) and I can then spend some time playing with other bits of paper in my craft room.

Its great to be back home, after a week dog sitting and I am looking forward to two whole weeks just relaxing and smelling the roses!!

Where have I been

Busy working!!

What started as one weeks supply work has turned into a whole term! I am ill prepared for full time work now, totally unfit and unused to the world of 5 days a week earning a living lark.

So that has left little energy or time for much else.

Preparations for the every nearing wedding continue, I have finally found a dress that I like and fits, just need accessories now, I went along with the bridesmaids to share in the design process as they are having them made, I am busy making order of service cards and the name labels for the tables (this is proving a bit difficult as I cant seem to source the 100 red eyelets I need for them. I cant change the design as I have already made 20 ... watch this space), and slowly things are getting ticked off the long 'to-do' list.

I have also spent lots of time in the garden, mainly planting out as the greenhouse, although on its last legs since the wood is so rotten its a wonder it can hold in the broken glass window panes, has done very well, and nearly all the seeds I have planted have germinated at 100% success rate. The only real losses have been my cucumbers which grew to nearly 9" and then succumbed to a caterpillar in the roots which killed them all off. However hopefully in a month or so's time we will be enjoying a riot of colour from the hundreds of petunias and other bedding plants, plus looking forward to munching the other veggies I have planted. The strawberry plants have gone mad and have huge fruits on them already.

We have had a few family get togethers, Martin had a bbq for his birthday, we went to see the new Star Trek movie with Laura and Wayne, and working in a school so close to Kelly meant I got to call in for a cuppa and an update on her garden this week when she had a study day off.

Yesterday Martin collected his new car from the garage, and is proudly driving around in it. We went to the Harvester to celebrate it last evening, mainly because I am dog sitting while Mum and Dad are on holiday so I needed feeding.

So if anyone has missed me, I am still about, just busy with teaching, weddings, gardening and general life!

Poor neglected blog.

I have been working supply cover full time for the last two weeks and am booked for another full week next week (including a school trip which should be fun as we are going to see my fav. animals, sheep!) so poor blogland has been rather neglected of late. The supply school is a 55 mile round trip away which means much too early mornings and collapsing on the settee when I get home, but they are a lovely class with just enough challenge to keep me on my toes.

All that hasnt left much time for real life events but we have done a few exciting things. Last Sunday, since the government announced the car scrappage scheme and were happy handing out two grand for our old metal box on wheels, we went to have a look round the new car show rooms. Laura had reccommended the Mazda 2, not a car we would normally have gone for, but we thought we would make that one of our ports of calls. We stopped in the Toyota place on the way, where we giggled over the Eygo. A strange little beastie, really small, mostly made from plastic, an ugly shape, and ....... we liked it. Realising we sounded just ike Gezza Clarkson we left, laughing our heads off (to the quizical looks of the sales man) and made for the Mazda garage.

The showroom, a huge huge area, housed only 3 of their sports car ranges so we were a bit daunted, but the receptionist took us outside to look at the Mazda 2. Martin fell in love with it at once and we quickly queued up to sort out the deal with the salesman. Better still they were offering nort percent finance! As we chatted to the sales guy we liked the car more and more, especially as they were giving £400 worth of metalic paint away too, so he trotted off to check availability. We nearly fell of our chairs when he told us the first date anything could be delivered was August!!!! We thought the industry was in trouble...well maybe this is why? The salesman could see how unhappy we were and suggested that we might like the diesel model he had in the pound which he could let us have for the same price even though it was a step up model as they were being discontinued. He went off to get it and we were even more excited when we heard the way it purred and sat in it with the engine running.

"OK so this counts as a new car?" asked Martin. "Then I have a 10 year old peugot I want to use in the Scrappage deal"
"We're not doing it" said the sales guy.

We just couldnt believe it. I had known that the manufactures had to match the government - a £1000 each (Martin hadnt) but we both were under the impression it was obligitory for all companies to take it up. No apparently not. Martin was gutted. No way could we afford it without the government's money. He got quite sharp with the poor sales bloke, but it couldnt be helped, we had to walk away.

The rest of the afternoon wasnt much better, many places were so swamped with customers (we followed the same people round obviously doing the same as us) that they didnt have enough sales people on call (many only having the usual sunday skeleton staff), most didnt have up to date price lists (how sus is that?) Renault couldnt even tell us the price of the Chloe!!And some dealers had simply put the prices up by so much we couldnt even afford a basic model, Ford has put the price up from the £5,600 I paid for my KA 14 months ago to a whopping £10,500!!!!!

Finally with only 15 mins to go before closing time, we arrived at the Peugot garage, where Martin asked 3 simple questions. We were staggered when finally someone gave us straight answers without having to check price lists, or see to three other customers at the same time, but actually knew what they were doing and talking about.

"Are you doing the scrappage scheme? "
"Yes"
What's the price of your basic car?"
£8000
"What finance do you do?" To which the guy explained the finance deal was actually better off getting the next model up since the interest on more money lent went down and you ended up paying back the same amount.




Waayhay!

So come the end of May Martin will have brand new wheels (not yellow ones though, again the only other basic colour red wasnt going to be available until August so the dealership has gone halves on the price of metallic blue) and the government will be short one grand.

Back in '74

Dont you just love what photoshop can do.


This is an old (ok I am willing to admit it, its me and DH taken in 1974) on a kodak instamatic.
A bit of a short play in photoshop and its still me and DH back in '74 but now its a much rescued digital image! (of course it hasnt made DH's hair grow back irl though)

Easter hols,long and rambling

Wow, I can't believe how long it is since I last blogged. Mind, its mostly been same old, same old, so it would have been pretty boring blogging if I had come on before.

So what have I been up to? Well, not a lot of crafting as I am well into 1st and third person, point and click adventure games at the moment, having covered all but one Nancy drew, and all four CSI games in the last four weeks.

I have also been busy in the garden, sowing more seeds, and pricking out those that are growing well, and have even put a few out in the garden!

There has been a few fun and games worthy of reporting though.

The schools are on holiday now, so Laura and I were nipping over to the Papermill to stock up on more card/paper to finish off the wedding stationary (name cards and OOS still to go). Wayne and her have also had to sign up for another 6 months in the rental place so have decided to jazz it up, so I said I would buy them plants instead of eggs for their easter gift. This entailed a stop off at Bybrook Barn Garden Centre to look at the flowers she might want.

As soon as we walked through the door, she spotted the pet hall and wanted to go see. I dragged her round the indoor plants for a while but it was obvious she could only focus on the animals so gave in and got dragged into the fish tank area. Of course then she wanted a fish! She doesnt have a tank set up but she does have a large fish bowl (for the wedding decorations) so after an expensive hot chocolate and sausage roll in the cafe, I agreed to buy just one fish for their pressy instead of plants.

So thats how Gill the Red Cap arrived on her table in a fish bowl, worrying the life out of her as he didnt seem to want to swim. Thankfully this was just stress from change of home and soon he was busy zipping round the tank.

The follow-up was the next day though when I got another panic phone call. Wayne and her had been out to buy another two fish following on from the sucess of Gill, but the small bowl, with no air pump was not up to giving life to three water breathing creatures, one had already died, one was in a bad state and Gill was failing fast. She was phoning me for moral support as she did CPR through a straw into the water and waited for Grandad to arrive with his fish tank pump. The good news is that the crash team arrived in time and Gill and Bill are doing fine.

Dad has also been up to fun and games. His next door neighbour, around the same age as me,blonde and living up to her image had phoned my parents from Tesco car park. He quite often has to go rescue her from the dippy scrapes she gets into. This time the new(ish) car her hubby had just got her refused to open to the electronic key, and she with a full barrowload of shopping including icecream. So dad went up there, thinking that if he couldnt get the key to work at least she could put all her shopping into the boot of his car and he could bring it home for her. Anyway, after both of them spending some time attempting to open the car, they did just that, but as Dad was driving them both out of the carpark, intending on getting her other half to sort out the car, she spotted another car, which she said was the same as hers. Thinking she was joking, dad pulled up alongside it and told her to blip the car key at it. Yes, you are there before me, of course it opened. They had both been trying to get into the wrong car!!!!

So apart from gardening, playing 'puter games and messing about tryng to make order of service cards what else have I been up to?

Not much really.

Martin had to work all Easter weekend and as Laura and Wayne were away in Arendel for a night, we invited Kelly and Ollie and mum and dad over for Easter Sunday lunch which was very yummy.

We had to have Bailey dog for the night when Laura went up to London to see a friend and Wayne flew off to Barcelona for his stag do. The dog was really well behaved but it was good fun and games keeping him and the cat apart, especially when Bails refused to be left alone in the kitchen all night, barking his dismay for nearly half an hour until we swapped them over and let the dog have the run of the house and the cat got shut in the front room.

We have booked our holiday for this year, hiring a cottage in the Yorkshire Downs.

The girlies all went and gave their design ideas and measurements to the lady making their bridesmaid dresses, a teacher friend of Laura's. I am convinced that if she can find the time as a full time teacher to make three bridesmaids dresses as well, then secondary school teachers really do have it easy compared to Infant school teachers, because there is no way I would have had time or energy to do that when I was working full time.

I took mum out and she managed to get herself a dress for the wedding, I am still struggling and starting to panic a bit now. If anyone sees something suitable for a very short, overweight, large busted lady to wear to a summer wedding please point me in the right direction.

As promised, the garden.

I have been doing a little bit of crafting, but to be honest my mojo seems to have deserted me a little at the moment.

I made this card for Wayne and Laura in order to hide the cheque for our contribution to the wedding in. The front bit is acutally a pocket. Wayne was sooo impressed, he actually spent more time cooing over the card than worrying about the money LOL



I used SU! Polka dots stamps, the hostess set of stamps and lots of empossing powder, and souffle sukara pens.

I have been working loads to get the garden into some sort of shape, and want to put the pics on here so that, next year when I see lots of open bits of space in the flower beds I will know which bits need filling and which bits will eventually sprout something. What usually happens is I see bare ground and find a burning desire to plant something in it, only to find later that there already were things under the ground and ending up with some places way over crowded. Hopefully photos will stop that happening

My square foot garden and an unsuccessful attempt to warm up the soil and protect it from cats and foxes. I didnt take into account the high winds though.

Some new perrenial plants and lots of bark make this little corner, usually a home for ivy and brambles much tidier.

Martin cut down the huge overgrown bush, which has let in much more light to the garden and also given me the room to weed and mulch this bed. Its still a problem to plant up as its always in the shade.




The troughs that fur baby Pumpkin bought me for mother's day filled with the bulbs Laura gave me.



The fruit bed still needs a bit of weeding and mulching but we have run out of bark - so have B&Q!! Amazingly this morning I noticed that some of the strawberries have flowers on them!

This bit is always a mess as its hard to stop the lilac tree putting out offshoots or planting amongst the roots. However I have developed a few arm muscles pulling out the ground ivy and putting the bark down. It was worth the effort though.

Genaral view looking towards the house, Martin has spiked and seeded the lawn to help make it a bit thicker.




And finally a peek into the green house and all the small plantletts that will hopefully grow big enough to fill all those gaps.

The eye's have it.

Well they have something anyway. Finding it a struggle to see small print, and having a £5 eye test voucher from Specsave, on Sunday I toddled off to get my eyes seen to for the first time in 3 and a half years. I took mum with me because its well difficult to choose new frames when you are as blind as a bat as I am.

The whole experience didnt start out so well when the guy doing the pressure test couldnt get my eye centred and ended up puffing about 10 times in each eye. Then a young irish girl, who's accent I struggled to follow, did the actual eye test.

Now I have been perching specs on my nose since I was 11 so thats over 40 years worth of eye tests, so I do have some idea of how these things go. They do not normally start by taking my glasses away and then asking me to say what the letter is in the mirror. Not with my perscription anyway. She was a tad upset when I said all I could see was a very blurred white blobby square! Ok she said, lets try the hand chart. So she got the hand chart and held it up to the mirror ... and that helped how? It was no larger and no nearer.

She moved a foot towards me, nope, still a white blob .... with a few black blobs on it.

She got the idea.

She put the lens holding frames on and shoved in some lenses. Yeah why didnt we just start from here?

If I wasnt too sure of her then, I lost total confidence when she started to give me encouragement to read the smaller letters on the chart - 'you can do it, you know you can read them, have a guess, go on!' Err and if I guess, how exactly does that help you work out my perscription?

It took nearly an hour to do the half hour bank of tests, partly because I just couldnt get an ear for her accent and partly because she was doing everything by the book - as per the above. Finally she worked out that I did need new glasses - durh!

Then she did the health tests, she spent aaaaages shining the light in my eyes, getting really annoyed when I didnt look at the mirror (which her head was obscuring) . She changed to the 3D camera but by now my concentration was lagging. After about 15 mins of bright lights on my retina she said I needed new glasses and to follow her. Outside as if in after thought she said I needed to do one more test. Still partially blinded by all the torch light torture, she wanted me to watch for black lines round a dot to appear and push the button when they did. Err what lines. Nothing appeared as shown on the chart, there was a faint flashing but no black lines. Four times we tried the test but no, couldnt see them or didnt understand what I was looking for.

Next thing I know she is putting me down to be refered to my GP? What?? yep, wait three days, ring GP for appointment, she would be making an immediate recommendation by letter that evening.

So this morning I rang my GP surgery, but the letter hasnt turned up yet. So I continue to worry and to carry a box round to catch my eyes in when they fall out!

Garden photos are still in my camera so please be patient and I will soon update more.

password protected

The lack of blogging is due to the fact that somewhere along the line something strange has happened to my lappie and it now wont remember any passwords, and this little bear of no brain is finding it hard to remember them all too. Its becoming really annoying that every time I want to check my emails (many times a day) I have to not only log in but fill in the log in page too (yes it wont even do that for me any more). Anyway I have finally hit on a combo of password and user name that lets me back into google and can update on here!

There is a fair bit to update too. Later today I am going to go and take some photo's of my garden as in the last week it has been changing quite a bit and now is almost ready for the summer!

Last week Martin had a week off, I had to work on Monday and Tuesday which allowed him one day to escape to the golf club but the second day I got him to hire the carpet cleaner and give our carpets their half annual spruce. Its amazing how well they come up, and for a few weeks we are now taking off our shoes to walk on them and being more careful with coffees!

Then we attacked the garden together, Martin spiked and seeded the lawn, I started weeding the ivy from the flower beds and mulching them with bark. Photos to follow.

On Thursday it was so cold (how can this stupid weather change so much, Tuesday we had breakfast in the garden in our tee-shirt sleeves) that we turned on the central heating and hibenated indoors, but then Friday again better weather returned so we dug out our English Heritage Membership tickets and headed off to Downe to see Darwin's house and gardens.

I am beginning to hate google maps and am seriously considering sat nav! Nearly there, within touching distance and google lost us round the narrow country lanes of Orpington. Well it was pleasant countryside and we were not phased, until we met a white van driver wanting to pass, impatiently wanting to pass, pushing Martin and my little car into the hedge, scratching all my door panel. Hopefully its not so bad it wont t-cut out but I was not a happy bunny and had little recourse as it was me that insisted on taking my car and not Mart's.

Anyway eventually we found the place and very interesting and lovely it was too. EH are trying out new audio/visual hand sets. My advise to them is - dont bother. Audio on its own is fine as you cant watch the video's and look round but worse than that the machines keep freezing up, or sending you back to the beginning of the tour.

Attempting to work our audio/visual hand sets!

Worse still, Mr Computer Illiterate managed to come out of the tour and get into Windows where both of us were unable to reset but could happily access all the emails to admin!!!! We didn't, just had to walk all the way back to the reception and get it reset

The long walk back.

We weren't allowed to take photos inside the house but I took plenty of the gardens.

The greenhouses and kitchen garden where Darwin experimented on plants.

He had a whole greenhouse full of insect eating plants!

Darwin's formal garden where he observed the plants following the path of the sun from his front drawing room.



Apparenty Darwin's son was set the task of annually measuring how much the stone had sunk into the ground in order to proove a theory on earthworms. His son understood the importance of a long term study because he continued to take measurements for 17 years after Darwin died.

More updates to follow plus photos of garden. Watch this space.

Bad Bloger! Slap wrist.

And I dont really even have a good reason why as life has been pretty slow moving so there is no excuse about lack of time etc. Of course that does also mean lack of interesting stuff to blog about so I guess that is the reason

I have done some supply work - not alot though, but I did get invited to a new school to my repetoire which made a pleasant change. I have been out around the countryside with my mum and dad, not intentionally but a someone long drive for a lovely lunch, and I also got taken to the pub for another lovely lunch with Laura and Wayne so havnt lacked for outings or food! And I have been busy planting up seeds, both indoors and in my greenhouse, getting the beds ready for flowers and veg, and generally tidying up (or playing Nancy Drew adventure games!)

At the beginning of last week I jumped on the band wagon (and in the car) when Mum and Dad said they were off to the garden centre. We went to Ashford, and had a pleasant wander around Brybrooks, looking at the gift section and browsing the plants and seeds. Dad was after some dahlia tubers so we spent ages choosing those, and then mum spotted the jigsaws in the toy section. She saw one or two or maybe even three she really liked so I offered to buy it for her mother's day gift. Of course, worse than a child, she wanted to do it the moment she got home so I relented and let her have it early.

Wednesday, and Martin's day off, saw us both out in the garden giving it a helping hand shrugging off the winter coat and getting it ready for spring. The grass was finally starting to grow so Martin set to with the first mow of the year, whilst I busied myself in the greenhouse and in the flower beds.

Then Martin hacked down a particularly large tree shrub that had overgrown its space, which flooded light into the garden but upset the cat as it was his favourite climbing spot.

Friday, again Dad had itchy feet and wanted to go for a drive. With no idea in his head of where we were going, we headed off through Canterbury, down the Dover road, and into Folkstone. Mum and I thought we were stopping there, but he carried on driving, only stopping at Hythe so we could use the comfort facilities in Somerfield. Then with some small trouble finding the right road we continued along the Dymchurch road.

By now we had been in the car a couple of hours and were getting a tad peckish so Dad!!! suggested we go to the pub at Dungerness for lunch. Finding the right road did seem to be the theme for the day though as even that took some finding. We settled for the pub featured in Eastenders a while back,


it seemed quite popular as the car park was overflowing, but we found a table easily.

The fish and chips were superb (if not rather overpriced) and repleat from our meal, we got back in the car. Mum kept on 'moaning' that she had completed the two puzzles she had got on Tuesday and wanted to buy another so dad relented and we drove from Dungerness to Ashford (via a few more 'oh this isnt the right road after all' detours, leaving mum and I in fits of giggles) and yet another jjigsaw was purchased.

In all we were out for over 5 hours with only a short break for our yummy lunch, but it was a good laugh and Mum and Dad were on good form. Shame it didnt last though as by Saturday mum was laid up with a bad back and yesterday it was diagnosed as a kidney infection - poor my mummy.

In order to make up enough hours (and because it was stock take) Martin had to not only work Sunday but do a long day too. I think Laura felt a bit sorry for me so she offered to take me out to lunch on Sunday. They took me to the Red Lion in Hernhill (we used to go there for our school christmas staff do) where we spent three hours over a delish three course sunday roast, chatting and laughing. Thank you for inviting me guys I really enjoyed myself.

This week Martin is on holiday but so far I have been called into teach so he has been on his own with a long list of chores. Yesterday he hired the carpet cleaner and I now have wonderful, looking like new clean carpets!

Updating my week

*phew*! I have managed to successfully complete the Pad challenge set by the lovely Debs and completed my target amount of Layouts each week. I even have one extra one I have not included and one sitting on the table that only needs a title cut out and suck on. Thats real fast scrapping for me!

And that was also with a sore hand. Yes the hand didnt really go down completely until Saturday and it is still painful today but I am sure nothing is badly damaged and I will live, I just cant do as much as I usually do.

This week's diary:
Last Monday I finally got round to making an appointment for my smear test - and no its not the 'Jade effect' that is hitting the news, my letter has been stuck on the fridge for quite a while now and I have had my family nagging me constantly so I finally got fed up with them and made the appointment.

We also got an invite over to Laura and Wayne's for dinner as Wayne invited Martin to watch Spurs (Yummy, thanks Loz)

Tuesday I drove off out into the countryside to find out how far a school advertising a Foundation Stage job was to me. Its only about 12 miles away but it turns out its all through windy country lanes and takes over half an hour to get to. I shall still apply though.

On Wednesday Laura rang me early to ask me to go get a vet collar (bucket) for Bailey the dog. He had been for 'the snip' and needed some after op TLC so Martin and I got to dogsit for the day. Bails was a really good boy, we bought him to our house and mainly he played in the garden quietly, although he did have a bit of a struggle to lay down and sleep anywhere. The weather had bucked up too, so Martin put the shelves back up in my greenhouse all ready for this year's bumper crop growing!

Thursday I had my hair trimmed. I put Debbie, my hairdresser under a spot of pressure, as she is not always consistant with my cuts, but last one, the girls were really impressed and kept telling me what a good cut it was. So I told Debs I wanted exactly the same again ... well she tried her best, and the good thing is that my hair does grow quickly. LOL

Another tiring day of supply work, including a ticking off from the secretary for taking the class out to break 5 mins early, and then a lovely surprise. Kelly and Ollie phoned from the train to ask if we had made any dinner arrangements. Being Friday Martin was at the golf club signing up for his weekly competition games so no we hadnt. Well did we want to join them at the Harvester for a meal? Did we ever?

So we collected them from the station and had a lovely chicken platter with them. They had vouchers for free sundaes and we had been looking forward to them having seen the concotions floating past us towards other tables. Alas it seems that the vouchers were not for the normal off the menu sundaes but for some horrible desert made from mostly melted soya milk (kelly is alergic to) no cream and somewhere burried in it a minute squeeze of topping, flavour of your choice. Martin ate his, Ollie polished off Kelly's and I simply didnt bother. Still the rest of the evening was fab (and thankyou Ollie for the treat).

We dropped them at the station, but 5 mins later they were back on our doorstep for a cup of tea as Kelly had not read the train timetable quite right LOL The week was closed by a very quiet weekend as Martin worked all Saturday and played golf Sunday plus watched his team defeated for most of Sunday afternoon, leaving me free to craft and, my latest obsession, play Nancy Drew games on my pc.

Garden leave

I may be the world's slowest paper scrapper, taking 3/4 days to stick a few papers together, but I can digi scrap real fast!

This is one I have just done while waiting for Martin to finish having a bath (took me 20 mins from beginning to end) and is a photo I took over the weekend. We had stopped for a breather so Ollie grabbed his 'How to' book.



All done with Chickidee a freebie kit from Sara at sweetblossomdesigns

Half term update

Work proper finally started on Wayne and Laura's build. This is coming down and two lovely new houses with intergrated garages are going on the site.

Laura wanted to do something 'fun' with me on the half term break, but neither of us could think of anything much to do.

On Wednesday we went back to the wedding gown shop for her to have another try on of her dress (I thought it was for the alteration fitting, but apparently that should be done six weeks before the wedding, so it was just a dress up session). She also chose her veil and headpeice.

Then we came back to her place and finished addressing all the wedding invites. Thursday she needed to catch up on school work, so with still no idea of what 'fun' thing we could do we found ourselves in Ikea at Lakeside on Friday buying stuff for decorating the wedding reception hall and making the favours (no clues).

Ikea takes so long to walk round, that we were too tired to do much in the way of looking for an outfit for me to wear at the wedding, Laura picked out a couple of outfits but she had grabbed the wrong size so they didnt fit. I am not too sure her idea of what suits me is anywhere close to what I think does, but I am open to ideas. We are going to go out again nearer the date, once the summer season hits the shops.

Friday evening I got a phone call from Kelly asking for me to join a gardening gang at her place the next day as they wanted to redesign (do something) with their back garden. This was going to be a bit of a problem because in my eagerness to be ready for Laura taking me dress shopping, I had slipped down 4 stairs, entangling my hand in the bannister, and at the point of the phone call it was rapidly swelling.

Luckily she had invited mum and dad too, so dad drove. But it was very frustrating not being able to do anything practical. I ended up sweeping leaves off the patio, while dad dug, mum made tea and Ollie and Kelly 'discussed' the overall design.

We only stayed a few hours, as dad was unsure of leaving his little hound for so long. I have spent the rest of the weekend rather fed up as there has been very little I could do with only my left hand. Annoyingly all my new goodies including my hostess gift turned up from SU! and have had to sit on the table unopenned. Luckily the swelling has gone down today and although still slightly painful (bruising I expect) I can at least do stuff now.

BBC book list

Apparently this is doing the rounds, I found it on Facebook but cant track down the original.

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (X+)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X+)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (X)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (x)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (X)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X+)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (Gave up half way through)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier(X)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X+)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (Gave up as found so boring)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (X+)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X+)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame(X+)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X+)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X+)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (*)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (Started, not my cup of tea)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (X+)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X+)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (Had to stop, too upsetting)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (X)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (X)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X+)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (X)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (X)
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (X)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X+)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (X)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (X)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (X+)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Some)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (X)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (X+)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (X)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


41 - thats a few more than 6 then, Auntie Beeb!

This week's LOs.

And I am falling more and more in love with my little bug!

Proping up my eyes with matchsticks!

Last night the council shut the main road at the end of our road (about 20 metres away) and spent the entire night with heavy lorries, diggers, cement mixers and phuematic drills doing something or other! We had been pre-warned but only of the road closure, not to the extent of work and level of noise we would be subjected to .... I did try blocking it out with my ipod but around half one the batteries went.

So this one very tired blogee trying not to make too many typo's updating my blog.

Yesterday my dear friend Ann came for a visit and a very long natter. She used to be my brilliant TA when I was working full time and its lovely that during the holidays we can get together and have a huge catch up. She is the only person I still have contact with from the school which is really sad since I worked with most of the same staff for nearly twelve years if you include my teaching practise. I know as a teacher it is hard to maintain a social life but it would be nice if I could see more of my ex colleges.

Still Ann kindly bought over a lovely bunch of flowers and news of how everyone there is doing. She did nag me a little as I have not been updating my blog enough but to be honest little has been happening.

There are a few bits of news though and I have been doing plenty of scrapping thanks to Debbie's challenges on the Pad.

News items. Kelly got her results for the exams she took last year and past with flying colours. She is a fair way towards getting her second degree in accountancy now.

I have finally finished the wedding invites, both evening and day ones!

Martin was off all week last week but I had to work 2.5 days and he spent another 2 days laid up with a bad back..bad enough to visit the doctor, who after suggesting private physio, gave him some stronger painkillers which along with some day time tv cure, fixed his pulled muscle in a jiff. I have great faith in the doctors in our practise but apparently this particular locum was not up to the usual high standards and didnt even look Martin in the eye let alone examine him.

Of course that meant we did very little on his break although we did have a day at Bluewater where he got a brilliant bargin on a new jacket for a tenner.

I lost 2lb on my diet, a great start.

We dont do valentines but since Martin had to go back and work on sunday we did go to Toby for Sunday tea. Yummy it was too. Crafting and other stuff. I am not doing too well with my photo a day, well in fact I have been totally useless at it, but I have not given up entirely. So far this month...

The work on the monstrosity behind our garden continues - tell me that structure at the back is a shed? Huh! Those are our chimneys in the background.

I finally persuaded Martin to light the fire!



On my way to work, I stopped to snap the view across the Ashford valley.
My rhubarb is poking out its heads.
Spring finally is arriving - I didnt even know I had planted these croci
My fish look like they have come through the winter cold snap


These are finally finished and ready to go out.
And today's of the closed road.

Some scrapping!

Just a couple of LO's as I have finally finished the wedding cards.

The first is another entry for the Pad challenge to get us all scrapping



The second is a class from the UKS cyberclass but since I was well pasted the deadline its going as LO 1 for this weeks Pad challenge. My version of the Wild Cat class except I didnt want to do all the painting so used distress inks on the edges and an SU roller stamp as the background.

I cut the journal note and the butterfly swirl on my cricut using jpegs found on the net and then converted to 'svg files in inkscape. using Bo Bunny Back to Dots paper

Button up buttons,
thickers from my advent swap (thankee kindly)
studio g date stamps
loads of inking.

I'm still here.

I have not abandoned blog land, but I have been fairly busy the last couple of weeks. Some supply work is coming in, but most of it is quite a distance (for me) from home. I am now quite populare at both Deal and a school the other side of Ashford - so much so that the secretary there actually approached me to apply for the maternity leave vacancy. I have applied but wont be dissapointed if I dont get anywhere as the distance is wearing and its for KS2 which I know little about.

We have also been under the blanket of snow the rest of the country has suffered. I hate snow with a passion so I was not rushing around like a headless chicken trying to get photos like the rest of scrapbooking land, but snuggled in my craft room.

Laura's school closed early so she came over for a quick visit, but refused to go out in the cold and make snow-angels. She thinks about the same of snow as I do. I did manage to take a couple of photos the night before as it started to lay though.






I have also been busy crafting, as the Pad, in particular Debbie, is dedermined to get us all scrapping this year so have been running a series of open challenges to get our mojo going. This month we have to make at least 4 LO's (one a week) to be in with a chance of a small goodie give-away. Since one of my resolutions is to do more journalling, I thought a good way to get into that is to use information on my blog to jog my memory so I have started with 2007 photos, and made a paper version of this LO:

Original digi version

Latest paper version

I have also been very busy making wedding invites and evening invites for Laura and Wayne, but I will be blogging more about those once they have all been posted out.

Some brilliant news!!

Yesterday I had a phone call from our Bessie mates, Jan and Trevor, asking us if we would like to go out for a drink with them.

The last time we had been out together for anything, had been before the Christmas before the one just gone. Over a year, due to their daughter Jo falling off her horse, which ended in her spending 6 weeks in a coma and the subsequent time regaining her movement and speach. No its not like on neighbours where the coma patients just sit up and demand to know whats happened in the last 5 episodes, and then are up and playing footie in the next episode. Recover is a very long, slow and d painful recovery. Jo is so determined to recover though.

We had not had a progress report from them since October and although we exchanged texts at Christmas, with me having flu for so long, we had not had chance until last night to catch up with each other. We knew that things must be much better all round for them though, that they felt they could leave Jo in the capable hands of her other half Ross to come out for a break.

And it is brilliant news.

Jo no longer has to use her wheelchair, in fact for the most part she is getting around on crutches all day now. She can managed stairs, and at weekends when she comes home from the unit, is able to sleep upstairs instead of in the lounge. But best news of all, her physio is, for the first time, starting to talk of a full recovery!!! We are just sooooo very pleased for them all. Jo herself has said that she is going to run the marathon not this year but next, she is so single minded about her own recovery. I for one shall be there to cheer her on!

Too much? Too little!

It either seems there is too little going on in my life to blog about, or too much and so I dont have time to blog it.

On Tuesday Martin was off, and I had read on UKS that Ikea had the small 8 cube Expedit units on sale with a £20 reduction. Now we are not normally Ikea people, Martin hated the place with a vengence the only other time he went, and I have only been one other time with Kelly.

I managed to persuade him though and he agreed to come with me to buy two of the units to replace the rather sad and untidy wire cube system that was kinda holding up my stash (albiet with a slight list to the left). Martin was rather impressed with the 93p english breakkie that was still being served even though we arrived 15 mins after the offer ends (they had cooked off too much and needed to get shot), and more than happy with his free bottomless coffee via the family Ikea card we picked up at the door. He was less pleased with the walk round the store, especially as he insisted that the large red arrow on the floor pointing to the market hall was the correct way to start, leaving us stood at the checkout area without having been round the furniture and kitchen section.

Luckily the place had litterally hundreds of the units and they were all stacked up in the aisle rather than us needing to hunt through the warehouse. Still cheerful and despite his 'sonic' screwdriver having no power he put both units together and also put up the cd rack and the two spice racks that have been sitting on the floor for over 2 years! By 7 that evening all my stash was rehomed, the room hoovered and I was ready to rock!



New units

Spice racks and cd rack full of paints and glitters

Old bookshelf full of photos in RUBS now looking lots tidier.


On Wednesday we had booked tickets for the whole family to go to the annual Pantomime in Whitstable's Playhouse. As children this was traditional, and in the 90's the show held immense popularity with people queuing down the highstreet from 6 am to nab their tickets on release day. The box office issued tickets first on Saturday mornings just before Christmas so it became a town event with carols and toast being freely distributed to the fans. We would send Martin down to get our tickets as we needed matinee times with the kids being so little. I'm not sure if it is such an event nowadays but since we dont now mind when we go, we book online and collect the tickets on the night.

Anyway, I had a phone call from Kelly late in the day to say her and Ollie had to work back so could not come, but had passed on their tickets to her bessie friend Helen (a lovely girl) and her babe, 3 year old Ethan. A shame Kelly and Ol missed it because the show itself (Dick Wittington) was as brilliant as ever, but Ethan was a dream to sit next to, totally in awe of his first live performance, so much so that at the interlude he looked at me and said 'I want to go home to bed now'. Bless him!!!!

Yesterday I finally got offered some work - it was 25 miles away in Ashford but as I have not worked since the start of December I didnt feel I could turn it down, especially as they sounded so desperate. It was a lovely school but it did take some finding, and some driving in the torrential rain.

So with all that I have not kept up my blog, my 365 photos or my scrapping. However here are a couple of LO's I made last week, full of excitment and enthusiasm for usin gmy cricut and new SCAL software.



I even learnt how to download free clipart and using photoshop, inkscape and SCAL cut out the chipboard snake!Hissing Sid

Bazille Cardstock Pinecone
Chatterbox papers, Chateau stripe, Courtyard flowers,
Scenic Route Jargon Rub on Alpha
Barefoot You & Me quote
7 Gypsies Memories stickers
Prima printed flowers
Buttons from stash
Daisyd stitches roller
Snake cut on cricut using Animals2 Dingbat font




I also decided that instead of getting rid of my MM scrapbook calander from last year I would go through them again for more inspiration and actually DO the LO's. This one is a scraplift of 31st December which was trying to encourage me to use the packaging from my scrapbook products but as I havnt bought any I just used the LO as it stood. Look I cut out all the deckle edges, the circle and the star on the 'bug'!



Hide and Seek

3 bugs in a rug jovial-cheeryo
3 bugs in a rugh groovy-love beads
Bazille Tropicanna from Gold Fors
Bazille Pink Blush
Cosmo Cricket buck naked chipboard buttons