When the boat comes in.

I've spent some of my evening cutting out many pictures of fish and loaves of bread. Any guesses why? I'll answer that tomorrow. In the meantime I shall leave you with a musical interlude :-)

Dance to your Daddy,
My little babby,
Dance to your Daddy,
My little lamb.
You shall have a fishy
In a little dishy,
You shall have a fishy
When the boat comes in.

A get things done day

I enjoyed child-minding on Tuesday and Wednesday, but that made this need to be a get things done day. This morning I went swimming with my mum (and the plumber came and fixed our kitchen tap), this afternoon I need to go out and do things like go the bank, post office, library, job centre, Argos... I'm sure there are other places, but how's that for a start? This evening I plan to finish getting my sunday school stuff planned so that I can speak to the lovely ladies who are helping me to let them know what we're doing.

blowing raspberries

I'm looking after a delightful 1 year old today (who is currently napping else I wouldn't be on the computer!). He's at the walking and wanting to climb on everything stage so you can't take your eye off him for more than a few seconds. Luckily his parents are very clued up about what he can do and have made this a pretty child-friendly house. Although he apparently does still manage drop things like his dad's phone down the toilet given half a chance.

It's been an action packed morning what with climbing in and out of his fisher price car - through the window (him,not me). I can't wait to see if he still gets into his car like that when he's 17! We've also had a great time getting pretty much all of his toys out of their boxes, and best of all blowing raspberries on each others tummies. He's very good at it actually :-)

It's raining, It's pouring...

Today has been wet. That pretty much sums it up. Especially my drive up to near Stansted and again on the way home. It's a bit scary how little you can actually see when it rains on the motorway. Luckily me and my car have got to know each other and that stretch of road fairly well during the last year, so I was ok. But I was glad when I drove out of the heavier rain and back into the more traditional British drizzle.

Cleaning

There's something quite therapeutic about cleaning I think. The satisfaction when something is achieved, whether it's tidying up a shelf or de-cluttering a whole room, you can look at what you've done and feel happy.

Since I moved back to London I've been gradually going through all the stuff in my room, working out if I needed it or not, and if I did want to keep it where it ought to go. I love being able to pick up an object and think 'that goes there', and when something does have a place to go it seems to make tidying easier. Please don't mistake me, I'm not trying to lecture people with messy houses, anyone seeing ours at certain times would realise that, I'm just expresssing how good it is when things are tidy and you can think 'I did that' and have a big smile on your face.

I've experimented with selling some of the things I wanted to get rid of on ebay. It's been fun, and some things have sold and made me a bit of money (when I say a bit that's really quite true, once you take costs into account it doesn't add up to much, but at least I'm not out of pocket). I find it quite hard to predict what will and what won't do well on ebay though. At the moment I'm waiting for some embossing powder to end it's listing. Embossing powder is used, I think, with rubber stamps and ink, and it gives a 3D effect to the print. - I got these for my birthday years ago (my choice - we got them at a craft sale at school) and have barely looked at them since, hence my decison to try selling them. However the listing currently has 7 people watching it, but no bids yet. It's got just less than 2 hours left, so I'm hoping that some of those watchers (or at least one!) will turn into a bidder.

I seem to have got off the subject of cleaning somewhat. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm enjoying de-cluttering and sorting things out, and I expecially like it when it's finished and you can look at it and say "hey, doesn't that look nice".

Saturday, What a day, Groovin' all week with you

Ok, so now that song's in my head for the rest of the week, but I've had worse ones! HP has officially arrived at her new house, and hopefully the unpacking is well under way. I would have liked to go with them to help with all the fetching and carrying at the other end, and be company for my mum on the way home tomorrow, but there wasn't enough room in the car for HP's beanbag, let alone me as well!

Instead I've been up the M11 to my old house to visit Imogen and to pass my bed onto someone else. That sounds a bit strange, so I'll explain. When I moved into the house I didn't have a bed because Imogen had rented the house unfurnished. So we bought a bed from homebase online and had it delivered. It served me well for a year, but when I moved back to London it was too bit to fit in our car and I didn't really need it anyway, so it stayed.

Imogen unfortunately has to move out of the house because the owners are selling the property, and consequently she wanted me to do something with my bed. Bekki's friend Tim is wanting to acquire furniture for the house he is moving to, so it seemed a great plan to let him have the bed. This morning I met Tim at the house in GC and handed over the allen key and the instructions for how to assemble, and then we took it all apart and loaded all the bits into his van. Sorted

This afternoon I've been doing some tidying of the house and reading blogs. Now I'm off to see what I can find to do next.

A novel way to put on a duvet cover

Beautiful Skye

There's a project HP and I have been working on that I want to post a photo of, but
a) It's not quite finished yet
and
b) Daddy's taken the camera to work, so I couldn't actually take a photo if I wanted to!
So insted here's another beautiful picture from our holiday to Scotland. It's on the Isle of Skye looking from Kyleakin (where we stayed) towards the bridge from the mainland to Skye. In fact I have a feeling it was taken the evening some of us climbed up to the war memorial.

Not the most productive day

We haven't achieved an awful lot today, in part due to the two hours we spent at the town hall giving blood, and I didn't even give any blood. HP did though, and she likes to have someone with her cos she's only done it a few times and the time before last she went really faint. I didn't really mind - I got to sit and read a book for a couple of hours, and we started writing a big list of all the stuff she needs to take back to uni with her. We had to wait so long because it was just really really busy, but that can't bea bad thing given how we're always hearing about blood shortages. I would have given blood but I've still got a nasty cough that I'd had for a while now and decided I was a bit too under the weather than they'd like.

When we got home from the town hall we did sort out the washing, and then made lasagne and apple & blackberry crumble for tea, so I suppose that is actually quite productive. And it made my mum happy because it used up a little of the vast quantities of fruit that are lurking in our freezer. They both tasted good too, although it was more like lasagne soup than anything - it was very runny!

Now, once the Archers (radio soap on radio 4) has finished we can see what else we can be productive with. Oh, and talking of which, cue theme music. Time to go.

The big sort out has begun

Next weekend HP goes back to uni. Today we started getting ready for her to go by unpacking the last few bits that were still packed from before the summer when she came home, and began making lists (one of my favourite things :-).
Her room still looks a bit like a bomb has hit it (no offence intended HP, we know you've got the smallest room in the house), but at least by working gently at it all week we might avoid those very late nights as next weekend draws nearer.
We've also started putting together a recipe book for her to take with her, full of all the essentials for living a self-catered (in a house with her friends) rather than fully-catered (in halls in uni)life. I'm sure she'll be fine, she just wants everything written down so she doesn't forget.

Last Friday

Reading Kathleen's blog just now (the bit about the indoor playground place rather than the bit about her husband's hair) reminded me of the fantastic time I had last week with Joel, and how I'd threatened to post about it. However, HP is shouting at me to come and do some drying up, so it will have to be a short one. Best just put on the photos and leave it at that. Um, this is me at the top of the very high and steep slide that I made Joel go down with me (it was too scary to go on my own) and also Joel in the ball pool at the bottom of the slide. It was a fantastic day. To any of my friends with kids reading this I will happily volunteer to take your kids there for you.

reaching the big 3 0

No, I haven't aged 6 years in a few days, I've just sold my 30th book on amazon marketplace. It started as a way to get rid of some of my teacher training books that I no longer needed (having decided I didn't want to be a teacher and leaving the course), but I've somehow managed to find a lot more books around the house to list as well. (Over 200 in total!)

Hmmm, anyway. It's quite exciting checking email to see if any more have sold (yes, it's a sad life I lead, I know), and today we've actually sold 3, but that's not been the norm. Right, well that's about all I can say about that without boring you all to tears.

Oh, just one more thing, I've now got two 5 star ratings on amazon (hurrah) and three positive ratings on e-bay including, and I quote, "nice one -spot on! fast & wrapped well enuff 2 keep da monkees@RoyalMail at bay". It takes all sorts don't you think?!

Update: make that 4 books today. Definitely the first time that's happened :-)

It's my (quieter) life

Last week I spent lots of time visiting\looking after various children, this week I'm back at home and attempting to do some cleaning and sorting of all those bits that don't get done when life is really busy. Unfortunately it's also got really hot again here in London, and when it's like this my first thought in the day isn't exactly "now lets get out the vacuum cleaner and whiz round the whole house".

So I've kind of pottered slowly at things, in the meantime am keeping an eye on e-bay and the items I'm selling that end today. It does seem to be slightly more interesting than last time around - this time there were actually some bids made before we got to the last day. It's strange though, some things that you'd think would sell really well have had no interest, and others have had lots of people 'watching' (who will hopefully keep bidding as well!)

Right, I need to stop sitting in front of the computer and actually do something useful. I'll probably be back later though...

A picture to amuse...

...so you don't realise I haven't really written anything on here for a couple for days. I did something exciting on Friday and when I'm not too tired to write coherently I'll tell you about it.Oh, and in case you wondered, we made sure that the cat moved before we did.

Cinderella revealed

A fairy tale re-written

The fairy godmother was faced with a difficult situation - However had Cinderella's feet shrunk so much?(and when did she lose the ability to tell left from right?)

Artist at work

Yesterday's hard work revealed

Front
Back

Yesterday HP and I spent much of the afternoon (and some of the evening) turning a pair of her jeans which were very worn out in places (read lots of holes and rips) into two cushion covers. One of these was slightly more conventional than the other - it was made from the majority of the material from both legs. The second was made by sewing together all the useable left over bits into what vaguely resembled a long rectangle and then sewing it up into the finished cover (both are made with an overlapped part rather than using zips). These are the finished articles.

NEWS FLASH

HP is caught eating vegetables.

Monkey

We saw a couple of funny road signs while in Scotland. There was one which was meant to be a warning about sheep, but which someone had added humps to, leaving you wondering if you were really in Scotland, or had somehow sideslipped to be in the Sahara Desert (you know those camels can be dangerous!)
However, this one was my favourite.