Week of Overload.

This week seems to have been one of total overload, everything is closing in on me and I can't seem to get too much finished although I have started a fair few things. Mum is still in hospital. She has had the result of the biopsy on her knee back and it appears that there is a general infection in her joint. They are putting that down to the metal work in her hip. Three years ago she fell and broke her femur and after a traumatic time she had to have a load of metal work inserted to scaffold her bone. Right from the very beginning this was infected and it took nearly four months for it to heal and stop weeping. The surgeon is now convinced that the infection is in that metal work and it has to come out. They have done a load of scans and xrays and they 'hope' that the bone is strong enough to manage without it. If it isn't they will have to put more metal back in a different place. Its all a huge worry for all of us and for Mum. The operation is planned for next Thursday. The only good news is that they are going to do the operation at the QE2 , a much easier journey for us. 

This weekend Dad has been around to dinner, he has also spent a load of time in his garden sorting out his borders ready for the winter. When I popped around he picked me some of these lovely sunflowers. He didn't plant this particular one, it must have arrived via bird poop!!! Its a really unusual one with loads and loads of heads. So we have saved some of the seed and hope we can grow some more next year!!

I now have a lovely vase full of them in the living room.

We have also been sorting out the colour we are going to redecorate the living room. I think we have finally settled on a scheme so I am going to order some new bookcases and a suite of furniture. Carl will be taking some of our stuff with him to his new flat so its a great time to have a change. 

Today I went on a great course with my neighbour Jane. It was to make a vintage tea set out of clay, the time absolutely flew and I ended up making a cup and saucer, a milk jug, sugar bowl and a cake stand. It was totally absorbing and the time flew!!

This is the kind of thing we were trying to make, looks a bit rustic, but it was a case of learning the ropes and seeing what we could come up with.

Everything started with a thumb pot, something I've not done since junior school. Its not as easy as you might think, the clay is floppy and thins out in some places and not in others!!

We also made a cake stand, which we imprinted with lace curtains!!

By lunchtime we had made the whole lot, we spent some time drying them with hair driers which meant that we were able to paint them today as well. It was great to see everything take shape. If I did it again I know that I could refine my designs. 

The paint doesn't reflect the end colour so going with my favourite colour, all the insides are painted celadon green and the outsides are painted a cobalt blue. The edges and handles are all painted with a dark metallic colour which I am hoping covers a multitude of sins!!!

We can't wait to collect them next weekend !! I hope they all survive the firing process.

If you fancy a go take a look at ARTSHED, they have some lovely courses. 

Best of all the course that we did was reduced to half price via Groupon Bargain!!!

Here's hoping this week will be better than last week.

Time to Empty the Pot!

For my birthday in 2012 Laura bought me a 'Pamper pot' It was a pink pot with a slot for saving money, with no way of getting at the money until you smash the pot. Well today was pot smashing day. We planned to do it before we went on holiday, putting the money towards our spending money. We planned to smash it the week before we went, but we weren't able to get anymore in so we decided to smash it now. 

We all had a guess at how much money was in there, we had predominantly saved 20p pieces, although right at the beginning we were undecided so we knew there were some 50p and 10p in there as well.

We just couldn't get anymore in the pot!!

So we put the pot in a carrier bag and I gently tapped the top to see if I could remove the top and keep the main part of the pot to put flowers in afterwards.

In the end I was able to tap the top off and get at the money!!

There was a huge pile silver to count. Our guesses ranged from £100 to £200, it was hard to tell just how much was in there. 

In the end we counted it all and bagged it all up to take to the bank and we were amazed to find that the pot contained a massive £249 !!! We have already bought ourselves another one because you simply don't notice the odd 20p going missing from your purse, its a great way to save up for a special treat. 

The next pot was a bargain one from Tescos sale, they were selling them off after fathers day for a couple of quid. I hope the next one will fill a bit quicker!!

A Trip to London.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a course in London, in the Euston Road. Its an easy train trip to Kings Cross and a small walk to the venue. I like to visit as the building has the most wonderful views all over this part of London. The BT tower is still impressive, looks like something out of Dr Who !! The spire is St Pancras Church. 

This very ornate building is St Pancras Station and The Renaissance Hotel. The flat ugly building on the left of the photo is The British Museum. 

This is looking to the west, the roof garden below is lovely on a summers day, I popped out there and the planters were full of herbs, they smelt gorgeous!

I took the photos from the board room at the top of the building, perhaps one day I'll be chairing a meeting in that board room!!!! I was lucky enough to be able to stay over for the night at a Premier Inn jut over the road. It was a typical Premier Inn with an exceptionally large flat screen TV!!

We have had a bit of hospital orientated few days. Beth went out with her work for a 'fun' evening at the Hemel Hempstead Snow Centre. She actually had a good time right up until the very last down hill run where she lost control of the ring that she was on and ploughed backwards through a small gap in the safety fence and clobbered her back and neck on a metal pylon. She damaged her back and had pain and numbness in her legs and her neck. We ended up going over and an ambulance was called and she was taken to Watford General Hospital.

The First responder was very good and got Beth settled and gave her pain relief (gas and air) We then had to wait a fair while for an ambulance to arrive to transport her to hospital . Thankfully after Xrays they gave her the all clear, no broken bones. She does however have whiplash and a very bruised back, hip and leg. I think it may be a while before she risks any down hill exploits again!! I am just so thankful that it wasn't any worse. 

Mum went into hospital today to have a knee replacement, we took her in yesterday for a load of pre-op blood tests. She went into the hospital by ambulance this morning, but at lunchtime Dad got a call to say that they were not operating because she had a urine infection and it wasn't safe to do so until it was sorted out. So this evening they gave her IV anti-biotics and we collected her and got he back home. She is pretty fed up as she was hoping that by now she would be recovering from the op and not waiting for a date to have it done again. She realised that it was for the best but upsetting none the less.  

This week I am hoping for less hospital involvement!!

Have had a very 'average' week and weekend

This week has seen the end of the summer, it has been horrible weather wise, cold windy and wet. None of those lovely mellow autumn days, last warm days of summer easing you into winter, just full blown cold and wet. I don't seem to be able to cope with the cold anymore and I am freezing. During the week I had to resort to my hot water bottle, in fact two hot water bottles were required I was so cold. I now have to dig out my winter gear. Having done so I realise that I don't have any woolly pullies to keep me warm. This morning I put in an order at everything £5, as it says everything is five pounds and there are some great bargains on there!! I am now waiting for  my parcel to arrive!!

Today has been a washout added to that I have not really felt like doing anything I feel like I have wasted my day. I have made some 21st Birthday invitations, so I do have something to show for my efforts. I hope that the lady who ordered them likes them. (she liked the prototype!)

It was a nice feeling to have the stack finished and piled up ready to go. 

This week is going to be a busy one with a trip to Cambridge and an overnight stay in London for a course. I need to start thinking about my forthcoming hip op. I have finally been told that they will do the operation in the first week of November. Its a huge weight off my mind to finally know that its planned. I just need to get from now to then!! I hope you all have a great week.

Top Tip of the Day

When taking your morning tablets, make sure that you don't drop any accidentally  into your morning cup of tea, I searched everywhere for the capsule that I knew I had dropped but couldn't find it and then took a mouthful of tea only to realise the most foul taste was my missing medicine PUKE!!!!!!!

Impulse Buy!!!

I am not the worlds best house keeper, I aspire to have a nice house but with working full time there is always something that gets in the way. I have lots of ideas but usually run out of time before I get to translate them into the real thing!! This year I plan on swapping some of my furniture. Carl will be moving into a new flat so its a great time to look at buying some furniture that I have had my eye on for a while!

I have started by buying a new kitchen table, the one I have had for an age was perfectly fine but for years I have been battling with getting the chairs around it. The table I had was a round one that converted into an oval, but even as an oval you could only get 4 chairs around it (you could seat more but the chairs stuck out). So I decided to look for a rectangular table. When we visited Fran and Pete a few weeks ago they had a lovely rectangular table and chairs exactly the same as mine except they had painted theirs and they looked lovely. So this week I bought a table off of The Bay I am thrilled with it I can get all six chairs tucked in under the table which seems both bigger than the last one but takes up less space!! I now plan to buy some ESP (easy surface prep)  as suggested by Fran and change the chairs into something far more beautiful.  Strange thing about the new table, when I rung the lady to arrange to collect it I thought I recognised her voice, it turns out it was a lady I used to work with a few years ago, its a small world!!

Anyway onto my impulse buy. I popped into Aldi to pick up some cereal bars when they had an electric mini cake maker on offer. So I came out with the machine and grand ideas of what I could do with it. It has turned out to be a really useful machine and I have used it lots already. I am not usually a cake maker as it takes a lot of effort and seems to make a load of mess. But I decided to try this maker with a packet mix just to give it a go. I have been most impressed. The cakes are bite sized and cook in less than ten minutes. 

They only had pink ones left and at £7.99 I thought it was worth a go.

I have found that Petit Four cases from Asda are the perfect size. You can only cook 7 at a time and whatever mixture you use you can only get one teaspoon in the case.

Yesterday I made a couple of batches some fruit cakes, which was dried fruit and mixed spice added to a basic Victoria sandwich cake mix!! I also made another batch using left over bananas mashed down and mixed in with the basic packet mix. I know that this doesn't make me into a Nigella, but for a quick and easy cake which because of its size must be better than eating a full sized cake calorie wise, I am pleased with how they have turned out.

I have even pushed the boat out and added proper swirly icing to the top of some of them !! I have started to look on line for other recipes and it seems that you can make mini tarts in the machine as well, so I can feel some experimentation coming on!!

So as I said quite an impulse buy when  I was only planning on buying some cereal bars!!!

Finally I have had a bit of a week and I am glad that it is over so I can move onto a fresh week, Beth has been very helpful and she knew I was feeling a bit fed up with everything, so she surprised me a beautiful bunch of flowers to star on my new table!!

I hope you all have a lovely week make the most of the last of the lovely weather, you can definitely feel a change to the air first thing in the mornings, we are heading into autumn, my favourite time of year!!

Busy Times!!

I have neglected my poor blog and I have been reminded by several people, so I'll take the slap on the wrist and get my finger out once again!! Beth appeared in the local paper after they did an article of her hair cut and fund raising efforts. She was thrilled to have made the cut and loads of people seem to get the paper as we have had lots of comments from people noticing her!!

In the past couple of weeks Beth has had her GCSE results and she obtained enough A to C grades to start her college course at Oaklands. She is studying early years learning and she is so excited!!!

After enrolling at college we all went out for a celebratory lunch!!!

We have harvested our potatoes and this year the amount was just a tad disappointing. I think that we have something going on in the container as they all appeared to be small and scabby and not in a very nice way!!!

Next year we'll try some in a different container. The weather is still fantastic so we are making the most of the last beautiful days of the summer. 

I love the way the air smells as we approach the autumn, because of the children were born in October and November its a smell that reminds me of a very happy time of year. Going into hospital and coming out with a lovely baby, going into hospital in the warm balmy weather and coming out with a frost and the start of cooler weather, before we know it, it will be Christmas.

I am enjoying doing my sewing again. It is amazing how good it feels to be able to put pieces of cloth together and producing a dress. I have treated myself to a new sewing machine, Beth had loaned me her little one, but its not really able to do the full range of things. I need it to be able to do straight stitch and zig zag, also I need to be able to change the foot and put in  a zipper. I tracked a beautiful Elna machine on EBay and managed to win it. Tom and I took a trip into London to collect it and I have given it a bit of a run out. So far all seems to be fine. So I am looking forward to putting it through its paces this weekend.

I am also enjoying a bit of card making using an on line word program. I am quite proud of myself I have made my own colour combinations by using hexi-decimal codes!! (I am not even sure I know what that means!!!) But it works for me!

Today Mum had an appointment at the hospital, a pre med for her knee replacement operation which is planned for later this month. Everything seems to be OK so its all go for the 24th of September. I hope the knee makes a difference and that she will soon be back on her feet.

A Productive few weeks.

I have had a productive few weeks, I love it when I have a few projects on the go. Sometimes its great to have a few deadlines to stick to. I have also rediscovered my love of sewing. So it was great to spend a few hours making myself a dress, something I have not done for around 25 years!!  I was amazed that the techniques all came flooding back. I am really pleased with the outcome, I carefully measured to make sure that the fit was good, it is good!! The one measurement I didn't pay too much attention to was the length, so I will need to add a few more inches to it the next time I make one!!! 

On the plus side Beth has fallen in love with it and it looks like she will have the first one!!!

I was also asked to make a couple of personalised gift tags for a friend.. I had fun designing them and I was pleased with the results!!

I also made some pretty little glass angels for another friend. I hope that the friends she intends to give them to likes them. 

Finally last week Beth finally had her long hair chopped off to raise money for Cancer Research. She has donated the hair to another charity called The Little Princess Trust who make the donated hair into wigs for children who have lost their hair due to chemotherapy treatment. Our hairdresser Micheal at Ashley Charles Salon in WGC, offered to do her hair for free. So we went one afternoon last week for the big 'chop'

First of all they had to plait her hair so that they could chop it off without it getting tangled.

Here she is with her hair around a foot shorter!!

Finally she dyed her hair and packaged up the newly chopped off plaits to send to the charity. So far she has raised in excess of £300. Well done Beth and thank you to all our friends and family who have supported her.Have a great week and enjoy the sunshine over the coming Bank Holiday weekend!!

Not been the best of weeks.......

I finally finished all of washing created by a few days camping I am still amazed at how much is produced!! There seems to have been a load of things happening this week. Carl has gone on his holiday to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. He is there at the moment and sending back reports of what he is up to. I am really jealous and I wish I could have done the trips he is doing when I was younger. The closest I got to exotic places like Hong Kong is writing to my old Brown Owl when she left the pack and moved to Hong Kong  40 odd years ago. I am pleased that he can experience all these things. This week he has been in Bangkok and today he has been tending elephants in Chang Mai, what a fantastic experience.

Back to more mundane things - Bottles of coke. Throughout the summer Coca Cola have been issuing bottles with names on them. I found Laura when we were on holiday in Rome, I had a couple of bottles of Thomas and this last week I had a few sightings of Liz. Carl and Beth were proving to be far more difficult. I have my neighbour Karen to thank for this collection!! She sent me this photo after spotting all the names on the same shelf in just about the right order!! Brilliant.

Sometimes when its been a long hard week something happens to lift your spirits. Last Friday my hip took a turn for the worse. It became so painful that I couldn't walk. It really got me down in the dumps. I think its the pain that drags things down, it really took me by surprise because up until now I had been managing with painkillers and taking things easy. In the end I went to the Doctors and he referred me straight away to the hospital for an X-ray. Within the space of a couple of hours I had the X ray and that ruled out a fracture (thank goodness) . He has given me new painkillers and on Friday afternoon I took two of those and spent the rest of the day completely spaced out. The pain was under control but I couldn't stay awake. I decided to take it easy for the weekend and see how I felt on Sunday evening. Things do seem to have settled down so fingers crossed that I will get through tomorrow. 

Anyway on Friday when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself I received a beautiful floral display and a box of chocolates from a chap who I am helping out. It was so nice that he had thought of me.

This year my holiday seems so far away, I don't like having to wait until later in the year, but that's how it goes I suppose.

Have a good week.

Goodbye Weekend....

The weekend has flown by again,we seem to have packed a fair bit into it. Carl came back from Cub camp with a ton of washing....

This was AFTER I had washed two loads and got it out on the line!!

It took forever but it was a case of cracking on or having the house smell like a campfire for the rest of the weekend!

Saturday we invested in some more weed suppressing membrane to replace the stuff which was under the gravel that was under the trampoline. While the trampoline was in place the dog decided it would be a good idea to dig it up! Of course to replace it we had to shift a ton of gravel!! We left it until Sunday morning to attempt that feat, thank goodness there was a bit of a breeze or I think we would have cooked. I am not expecting to be able to walk tomorrow as its a while since I did that much physical labour!! It was lucky that Tom and I attempted it together we took it in turns raking and shifting!! I am happy that its done and we now have a nice space in the garden to sit in.

I am so pleased that we now have a place to sit outside, I have ordered a screen to hide the recycling bins which are a real eyesore. We also dug out some tubs that had been full of weeds and replanted them. We have plans to plant up some troughs and have flowers up against the bare fences. 

The weather has been so hot that it has really had a negative impact on the plants. We have been watering for England but they are struggling. Getting rid of the trampoline meant that I could trim the roses back and I am afraid its a kill or cure, I hope it comes again next year!!!

During the week Beth and I went diving again, this time it was my second week snorkeling. I am really impressed with how easy it is and how far you can go underwater with just one breath.  It has been years since I had to duck dive, but I was still able to do it and that really helped getting along bottom of the pool! I think I am going to have another go during the week and see if I can perfect my skills.

Yesterday I went out with Carl to buy some clothes for his holiday, he was buying I was along for the ride, I finally found a coke bottle with my name on it HURRAH!! simple pleasures!!

It was funny being in his car, He went back into Matalan to get Beth some socks, a couple of different people said 'cute car' what they actually meant was what is a middle aged woman like you doing in a sports car?? Oh well it was a good trip and we got what we went for.

Have a lovely week, don't work too hard.