Prayer Request

I'm trying to make a few decisions jobwise at the moment and would appreciate your prayers. I just wrote a whole post over at OWOA so I'm not going to write it all out here too, but if you'd go over there and take a look that'd be fantastic.
It's here
Thanks muchly :-)

Good Morning, Good Morning, you've slept the whole night through.

Well I did (see title), but it's still dark so it doesn't quite feel like morning yet. And I just left a comment over on One Weigh or Another and that showed up as before midnight, so some of them may not even have gone to bed yet.

However, I have got this song in my head, and it seemed only fair that I should share it with you all, so that you too could go round singing 'Good morning, good morning..'

Back with more later (maybe!)

Evening All

You give a little love and it all comes back to you, da da da.. lyrics

For the benefit of the many people who find my sight by googling the above phrase here are the lyrics: (for everyone else you can skip this post if you want to!)

You Give A Little Love And It All Comes Back To You
(from the film Bugsy Malone)

We could've been anything
That we wanted to be
And it's not too late to change
I'd be delighted to give it some thought
May-be you'll agree that we really ought
Two, three, four)

We could've been anything
That we wanted to be)

Yes, that decision was ours
It's been decided we're weaker divided)

Let friendship double up our powers)

We could've been anything
That we wanted to be
And I'm not saying that we should
But if we try it, we'd learn to abide it
We could be the best at bein' good guys)

Flowers of the earth
Who can even guess how much
A real friend is worth?
Good guys, shake an open hand)

May-be trusting
If we try to understand
No doubt about it
It must be worthwhile
Good friends do tend to make you smile)

We could've been anything
That we wanted to be
Yes, that decision is ours
It's been decided we're weaker divided
Let friendship double our powers)

You give a little love
And it all comes back to you
(Da da da ra da da da)
You know you gonna be remembered
For the things you say and do
(Da da da ra da da da)

You give a little love
Andit all comes back to you
(Da da da ra da da da)
You know you gonna be remembered
For the things you say and do
(Da da da ra da da da)
(Repeat and fade)
I hope thst helps :-)

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday

Last week I showed the world a purple pepper. I posted on how it tasted here. This week I discovered Purple Carrots. And here they are to prove it..
Did you know that carrots were originally purple? (click on the picture to get it bigger to read the writing)

Edited to add: They taste just like normal carrots, just stain things a bit more when you cut them up! Oh, and they're definitely not sausages!

Check out some more Wordless Wednesdays here

If you're looking after one child you might as well look after five, right?

(The fifth didn't want to stand nicely in the line so I'm holding him in one hand and trying to take the photo with the other - it came out ok on the third attempt. Thank goodness for digital cameras!)

Tower

Life is full of trips to the pharmacy if you're a Debbie Monster...
And it turns out that she can't take pictures not at an angle. [Or maybe she's just clever at making her tower stand up even when the rest of the room is on a slant.]

HP is at home, she is at home, she's here

Hp's coming home, she's coming home, she's coming

I'm currently out babysitting four delightful children (two of whom are still not asleep - I think they've been talking to each other and keeping themselves awake). When I get home, or soon after (depending which train they did get in the end - the one they were planning to get was cancelled) HP and her boyfriend Steve will be home from university for the weekend. Sorry, that sentence got long.

One of our cousins who lives in Reading is getting baptised (the full dunking type of baptism) on Sunday and we are all going to be there with her. We'll also be celebrating various birthdays, a wedding anniversary and an engagement - well if you're going to get together you might as well celebrate it all, after all we don't all get together that often!

I'm looking forward to seeing HP - it seems like ages since we last saw her.
Hurrah for HP :-)
BTW Apologies for any major typos, I did try to correct them as I went along, but the eczema on my fingers is really sore so typing is a bit trickier than normal. I saw the doctor today and got some stronger steriod cream for them, that also contains an antibiotic, so hopefully that will do the trick.

Beaucoup de Chilli con Carne

Today my Mum made Chilli con Carne for Alpha - My church is running an Alpha course and each week different members of the church take it in turn to cook. It was our turn this week, and here's what she made. Two big pans of chilli to take, and the third pan (with the lid on) for us to have for our dinner. Yummy, but with a definite 'kick' to it :-)

All you need is love

Any one who has scrolled down to the bottom of my site recently may have noticed that I now have a site meter. It tells me how many people have visited my site and things like where they came from (eg which site they followed a link from, or what search they did and found me).

One of the things the site meter has told me is that an awful lot of people seem to come to my site by google-ing the phrase 'you give a little love and it all comes back to you'. In fact, I just googled that very phrase and the post I titled that came up as the third site. Not bad for a little unknown blog like mine.

This has taught me several things.
Firstly, that it is good to title your posts with words from songs (I've also used I get by with a little help from my friends) because people will find my blog by searching for them.
Secondly, that there must be an awful lot of people out there who want to know the lyrics to that song and are really frustrated because all I put on that post was that line.
Thirdly, never try to come up with more that 2 points because you fingers can't type as quick as you think and you will have forgotten the third point by the time you get to try to type it.
Oh, and finally, it begs the question what shall I call this post? I'm not really feeling inspired. Oh, I know - the people at least coming to, if not reading my blog makes me feel loved so I shall call it... (well you don't need me to type it again do you? Just look at the top of the post - in fact, in a way you knew before I did)

Busy Busy Busy

I don't really feel that I've put anything proper on here for a while. So tonight I was determined to actually write something, and not just fob my readers (if I have any) off with another picture, even if it is something like a purple pepper!

Hmmm, life seems very busy at the moment, and has the prospect of becomming even more so. I'm not sure why, I'm just convinced it will.

I've added a couple of new links to my side bar so maybe I ought to say a bit more about them. 'The King and I' in a fairly new blog and belongs to the lovely Angela who goes to my church. Go over and say hello to her, and it might even encourage her to blog a bit more often (the words pot and kettle come to mind, but hey!)

The other site is One Weigh or Another. It's basically a group of ladies (none of whom I have ever met, but whose blogs I read) who are blogging together and encouraging each other in their weight loss journeys. I commented my way to becomming a member (meaning I commented so much and joined in the weekly weigh-ins and stuff and after a while they invited me to become a memeber), and now I can post on that site too. I was sure whether or not to link to OWOA from this blog as it's a kind of personal thing, but decided to go for it as several people that read my blog already know about it anyway.

Other stuff in my life - pretty much work, work, work at the moment. I'm facing a few issues in the school I work in. I don't want to be more specific than that, but would value prayers for me to work through those, and in making decisions about whether I do change to 5 days a week at school after Christmas and stuff like that.
The other other thing I've been doing is still slowly slowly selling books and a few other bits and bobs on amazon and e-bay. And I would recommend amazon marketplace as a fairly easy way to make a bit of money and get rid of unwanted books (and jiffy bags ;-) )

Red, Green, Yellow, even Brown, but I've never seen Purple ones before

I have to admit I've kind of cheated on Wordless Wednesday this week - I've put the link to go to this post i put up on Saturday, however I thought my purple pepper was worth sharing with the world at large and not just the few people that read my blog all week ;-)

Check out some more Wordless Wednesdays over at Chaotic Home and here

Wordless Wedneday

I think I posted this before, but a long time ago, so I thought I'd share it again!
I've jut got a bit of a thing about electricity pylons and the sky behind them, and Chaotic Mum inspired me :-) Head over and check out some more Wordless Wednesdays...

Beautiful Sky

Our weekend visitor

For several weekends now, and never during the week, we've had a (slightly unwanted) visitor to our garden. This cheeky squirrel. At least we're assuming that it's the same one every time. This morning I managed to rush out and capture him on the fence between our garden and next door (yes, it is falling apart slightly at that point), so I'm afraid it is a bit blurred. Maybe next weekend I'll get a better picture!

Works for me Wednesday - organising your shopping list

This is my first ever Works for me Wednesday, so let's see how it goes!

I want to share how we organise the food shopping list in our house. A while back we sat down and came up with a list of the things we buy most weeks. Once we had that list we thought about the layout of the store we go to and arranged the items in roghly that order. We always go round the shop in the same way so we had a farily good mental picture of what comes where. (If you don't have a regular route it might be an idea to come up with one as it saves time because you're not rushing here there and everywhere to find stuff)

I created a simple spreadsheet with three columns. (I'd put up a pictue of it, but I'm not on the right computer to access it!) We start at the fresh fruit and vegetables so that's what's at the top of the first column. Each item we buy regularly has the name of the item and then next to it there's a little box to tick (very important, I'll explain in a minute). The whole list fits onto an A5 sheet, and has three columns, each with a list of items and then the boxes next to them.

We have two copies of the list on the spreadsheet so that whenever we're started using one list we can print off another sheet and have 2 more ready. (Cut the A4 sheet in half and the same list is on both sheets).

Whenever we realise we need to buy something, for example we've used the last tin of baked beans, we tick the box next to baked beans. Then just before we go shopping we have another quick whizz round the kitchen and tick anything else that we need. Because we've been ticking as we go we generally don't miss off something important. And beause the list is arranged in the order we come to things in the shop it's easy to follow where we've got to and not forget to pick anything up.

I think at all makes sense. If it doesn't or you just want to see our list leave me a comment and your email address and I'll be having to send you a copy of our spreadsheet. I'm going to try to set up a 'contact me' button for people to email me, so have a look and see if I've managed that if you don't want to leave your email :-)

Ordered shopping list - It works for us.
Now go and see Shannon for some more works for me wednesday ideas.