Sarah's Blog

Hoppity-Hop!

Easter is coming! Yippeee!! Chocolate!

I do love Easter - for me, it's the start of spring proper (although with the weather we've had recently you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd skipped spring and gone straight into summer!) I do my Easter bunny bit (no, not the Bridget Jones bunny costume although I'm sure Tim would love that!) - I just get up at the crack (ha ha) of dawn and go outside in the garden and hide eggs for the kids to search for. I ADORE doing it - so much so in fact that I believe I shall still be doing it when the kids have grown up - Tim will have to look for them instead! :D

Anyway, to celebrate this forthcoming holiday, April and I decorated the seasonal table with Easter stuff. We now have cute yellow fluffy chicks, an Easter "tree" (branches decorated with paper eggs) and even a small Easter bunny popping out of an egg :) Here's a piccy:

 

We've been taking a bit of a break from homeschool work for the Easter hols but I've still been working hard! I've finished my first curriculum book! Yay! It's now available from my home education pages (link in sidebar) and is on the theme of "spring" ....... I shall start work soon on the June/July book which will have an ocean theme to it.

Other than that, not much to add ... other than Floyd diving down by the side of the cooker this morning, rummaging around, backing out very suddenly closely followed by (I'm fairly sure) a large hairy housespider. He then pounced on the hideous arachnid and ATE IT!! Mmmm! Crunch, crunch, squelch, squelch ..... *barf*

Whilst I applaud Floyd's efforts to save me from 8-legged monsters I wish he'd not done it just as I was about to eat breakfast! Blleeeurgh!!

A melting pot of "stuff"

No one thing springs to mind today so here is a mish-mash of bits and pieces.

Floyd. Moulting. Big time. He has very thick fur and, clearly, he has decided that spring is springing and that thick fur is starting to fall out. I brushed him today (or, rather, I chased him round the kitchen TRYING to brush him while he rubbed up against me, the comb, the washing machine ....) and a HUGE amount came out. He was purring so I guess he enjoyed it thoroughly.

Tacos. Had them for dinner last night, now the house REEKS. What is it with tacos?! Nothing else we cook has that affect and we cook some pretty pungent food sometimes!

Crafts. I have works in progress - so many in fact that I am starting to get slightly panicked every time I look in the direction of my craft box. To name but 2 - a tiger for April (I've made the head and made the body but the 2 have yet to join happily together) and a crocheted spring bag for me which needs to be felted in the washing machine and stitched together.

Homeschool materials. Rosie and April are about to start new topics and this resulted in me spending most of yesterday printing, laminating and cutting out Montessori materials to go with those topics. I was fair sick of it by the end of the day.

Builders. Of the annoying variety. I can do no better than to copy and paste exactly what I put on my facebook page: "Another day with the builders next door making on helluva racket. They've been here for WEEKS and are likely to be here for many more .... I'm sick of their noise ... I'm sick of the fact that they keep dumping stuff in our garden .... I'm sick of the scaffolding that's been put up that is partly IN our garden ... I'm sick of them listening to Radio 1 (which I LOATHE) .... I'M SICK OF THEM!!! Do you know what I want to do with one of those scaffolding poles? Do ya?......." Nuff said.

Rosie being silly about a scotch egg. Again (and I apologise for this laziness - I should re-write using different words) I shall lift from facebook: "Tim picked up Rosie from guides last night and her first words after coming in were "shall I tell you today's GRIPPING news?!" ... ok, sure ...... "there was a GIGANTIC scotch egg in one of the car parking spaces at the Guide hall!!" ...... riiiiiight...... Apparently, she wanted Tim to drive over it but he wouldn't ... the spoilsport!"

New car. Gorgeous. Going well. Love it. The lovely clean floor mats have already been christened with dirty footprints from our boots after being at the stables. Tim had a bit of an issue with the lights the first (early!) morning he went off to work. He couldn't turn some off (normally, he backs out the drive with the lights off to avoid disturbing the neighbours too much but he couldn't!) I pointed out that maybe the lights are on all the time like a Volvo. Anyway, he contacted Mazda who told him they are day running lights and are on all the time .... like a Volvo. EXACTLY. :)

Bye for now :)

Swings and Roundabouts

Well hello there :)

Another update for you - stuff has happened of recent days so here goes.

First, regular readers may well remember me mentioning a mole on my face (ooo! back in about November of last year). At the time, I'd been to see a cosmetic surgeon with a view to getting it removed but, being an absolute wimp when it comes to needles/blades/blood/doctors-in-general, I decided to try a more natural approach first. I'd been recommended castor oil as a way of getting rid of moles (even the fabulous lady I get my essential oils from recommended it). So, I got some and started religiously applying .... did it work? Well, yes and no. Initially, it really, really did! Within a couple of days it had started (yuk, sorry) crusting over and flaked off! Wow! I thought, this is going to be easy! Only it wasn't because it just refused to budge after that no matter how much stuff I put on. Oh drat!

So, after Christmas, I admitted defeat and made an appointment with the lovely Mr Tiernan at New Hall Hospital (Salisbury) and then fretted and chewed my nails off until the day of the appointment which was this Tuesday just gone. I can honestly say that even childbirth wasn't this scarey - the thought of having something cut off ANYWHERE is terrifying enough, but my face .....?! Yikes!

To cut a long story short, it's gone :) Mr Tiernan was fab and kind and reassuring. It was all numbed up with a local and then he shaved it off level with the skin and then burnt out the roots. Admittedly the sound/smell effects were pretty awful but other than that it was fine. After it was done, he said "do you want to look at it before I dress it?" To which I replied "no!" Uuurggh! I can just imagine it being like that scene out of Batman where Jack Nicholson becomes the Joker ... looking in the mirror and bursting into manic laughter while the poor surgeon frets "... but these instruments I have to work with ....!"

*Bursts into manic laughter*

Anyway, I can take the dressing off on Saturday then it's just a case of waiting for it to heal which can take a while.

What else? A silly little thing - April wrapped Floyd in a blanket when he was asleep on her bed - aaah! :)

My lovely, wonderful hubby brought me some new nature table stuff namely, a house, silks and fairies (there is 1 silk and 1 fairy for each season). I also made some little Valentines decorations for it - here are some piccies - still wintery at the moment - can't wait to change it for the spring one :)

The spring, summer and autumn fairies/silks that are not in use yet

Anything else ... hmmm, let me think .... hmmm .... oh yeah ....

Oh. Dear.

Tim got smashed into in Sainsbury's carpark (while he wasn't even moving!). The car is gone - at the assessors .... being assessed ..... probably won't get it back as it's getting a bit old. He, fortunately, was ok and not injured which is the main thing. However, since he had only VERY recently spent about £300 getting it serviced and having new tyres etc, his was the best example of "contained anger" I've seen in a long time.

He WAS angry but, if the car is written off then, he just said "oh well, it was getting on, might be good to get something newer". How he can shrug these things off so easily is beyond me ... I just explode *shrugs*. His self control is masterful :)

Oh, and finally, we've booked our holiday! Yay! There was a bit of hoo-haa when Tim found out he couldn't have the time off from work that he originally wanted, but we got there in the end. We're going to Centerparc again only staying in a posher villa this time *laughs* - with safe (which I was determined to have this time because I was always worried about leaving our valuables lying about) and en-suites and maid service. Nice :)

Lovely walk :)

This Friday just gone, with Tim feeling his foot had healed sufficiently to walk a reasonable distance, we decided to go to Moors Valley for the afternoon. I can honestly say I haven't enjoyed a walk as much as that for a LONG time - it was utter bliss. The weather was perfect - warm (just the right sort of warm, not too hot or cold) with a gentle breeze. We walked in the woods and enjoyed pure peace - just the occasional rustling sounds of forest animals and the birds singing. Our peace was temporarily ruined by a huge group of noisy school kids who had obviously been "released" for the afternoon and were making the most of it - we headed in the other direction though and quiet was restored! We walked in the woods for AGES and played on the fabulous wooden play structures and just breathed it all in .......

Eventually, we found our way back to the visitor centre and grabbed some tea from the restaurant and took it outside to a table to eat (too nice to sit indoors!) We'd just finished when a woman turned up with 3 dogs - 2 beautiful Whippets and an absolutely GORGEOUS Chihuahua. Now, I have to say, I'm not generally a dog lover but even I fell in love with it! We stayed chatting to the woman for a while and petting her lovely doggies and she happily answered the kids (especially April's!) questions. April was particularly keen to know how big the Chihuahua's puppies would be (tiny!)

After that, we wandered over to one of the other play areas for a bit and the kids went on the big wibbly-wobbly slides and tyre swings. By that time though it was getting late and Tim's foot was aching again so we headed on home.

Such an enjoyable, peaceful afternoon :)

In other news (and bringing us up to date today!), Floyd's Halloween collar is on it's way! Tim is not happy *laughs* but I think Floyd will look VERY cute and suitably attired for Halloween. YES, I know I'm sad!

A bit of this and that

Hello! :)

I have nothing in particular to blog about - this is just a mish-mash of stuff.

Firstly, my poor husband! He is currently on holiday but on his last day at work he had a bit of a mishap. He jumped out the cab of his lorry, landed awkwardly and sprained (badly) his ankle. Unfortunately, this was first thing in the morning so he ended up doing the rest of his shift on his bad foot and was really limping by the time he finished. He eventually got home and took his sock off and his foot was black and blue and VERY swollen - ouch! :( He spent quite a lot of the next couple of days with his foot in a bucket of iced water (grimacing). It's going down now and almost back to normal but he's still walking very gingerly as I think he's terrified of injuring it again!

Next ... Floyd! I got a couple of pics of my beautiful boy when he was having a kip in among my dead tomatoes (he's either there or on top the wheelie bin!)

 

he's trying to out-stare me in this next one!

 

Then we have Rosie-made colouring pages! She drew some pictures for April of Smash Brothers characters (a Nintendo game in case you don't know). I do love that she does these things for her little sis :) Here's April colouring one of them:

 

Next - muffins - blueberry mini muffins to be precise. I made these for tea the other day (shall start recipe page soon and put them on there):

 

Finally, 2 pieces of random "stuff and nonsense".

Firstly, this morning - Floyd was sat on the wheelie bin when he noticed a pigeon on the lawn. He went into "stalk" mode (you know that silly thing cats do where they crouch down low and wobble their bum) He suddenly leapt down and frightened the pigeon who flew off STRAIGHT into April's bedroom window glass. She was in there playing at the time and got one helluva shock when it smacked into the glass! Anyway, the pigeon, although stunned for a second, seemed ok and flew off up into a tree.

Secondly (and I must apologise for this - it's just my silly sense of humour - it tickled me), I did some washing up, filled the sink and went off to do something else for a bit. When I came back some of the bubbles had popped and gone down revealing this:

... it's a dinosaur egg-cup! This sort of completely random silliness makes me laugh sometimes :)

 

Autumn!

The evenings are really drawing in aren't they? I noticed (rather suddenly!) how early it's getting dark these days. I don't mind though - I do love this time of the year - September and October are always gorgeous. Slightly alarming to think I'll be making my Christmas cake at the end of next month though! Usual activities have now been resumed now the summer is over - kids starting back at Guides - Rosie went on Monday and made soup as cooking practice because she has the Rosebowl Challenge on Friday. Rosie is staying on as a Guide until she's 16 - they have the option of becoming a senior at 14+ but she wants to continue as a regular Guide for the time being and discuss other options later. April goes back to Rainbows tomorrow for her last term before moving up to Brownies in January - how times flies!

The kids have started thinking about Halloween already and the silly nonsense they'll get up to then (I do recall a revolting "slime" game that Rosie made last year!) I shall be being silly to though because I'm going to get Floyd a lovely Halloween themed collar (black with little pumpkins all round it and a cute Jack-o-Lantern charm). Tim will not be pleased - he thinks cats should be "natural" but, if only for the period leading up to Halloween (and over it!) he's having it. A lovely lady is going to make it the right size for him - he's ...ahem... quite a big boy!

Of course, Autumn wouldn't be Autumn without Autumnwatch!! It starts (and goes on for 8 glorious weeks) at the beginning of October and I just cannot wait. Also starting on telly (tonight - BBC1 - 8.30) is Planet Dinosaur which Rosie is VERY much looking forward to and will watch, no doubt, tucked up in her bed :) I think we'll watch it too although I have just started re-watching my BBC Pride and Prejudice DVD an episode at a time so I'm not sure. Dinos or Colin Firth/Mr Darcy .... hmmmm ..... *laughs*. I'm sure the dinos will win - I can catch up with Mr Darcy another time, he's very patient :)